Hey! Welcome to Lesson 4 of Eating for Fat Loss.

In this lesson we'll be going over tracking your progress.

We'll be tracking your progress in 3 3 different ways:

1. Weight
2. Measurements
3. Pictures

Weight: is important because losing weight is obviously one of our main goals. However, losing fat and losing weight are completely different things. We actually want to gain LEAN muscle tissue, and lose fat. If you are exercising and strength training during this program, your weight loss may go slower at certain points because you are also gaining lean tissue.

That's fine! As long as you are losing fat, we are headed in the right direction? But how do we know you are losing fat or gaining muscle. Taking Measurements will tell us this.

Measurements: I consider this even more important than weight. Measurements tell us if we are actually becoming smaller, (or bigger), and will tell us if our weight changes are correlated with fat loss, muscle gain, or fat gain.

We will multiple measurements over our body. Here are the instructions on where to take measurements and how to do it.

Neck: Use a tape measure and record the inches around the mid-point  of your neck.

Shoulders:  Stand up straight and measure the circumference around both shoulders.

Chest: Wrap a tape measure around your chest in line with your nipples.

Upper Arm (Bicep): Find the mid point or peak of your flexed bicep and measure.

Waist: Wrap the tape around your waist in line with your belly button, ensuring that the tape measure is inline the whole way around.

Hips:  Find your hip bones and then measure the widest spot of your hips.

Thighs: Take the measurement at the mid point between your knee and the top of your leg, stand up straight and try not to tense your muscles as you measure.

Calves: Measure at the mid point or peak of calf, which is usually the largest part.

Before and After Pictures:

Have someone take a picture of you in the same spot every time, or use a mirror. Examples of poses are below. If you don't have someone to take pictures, use a mirror, and use the same one every time. Different mirrors look different, so it's important we stay consistent.

Below you'll see an excel sheet that will allow you to track all of your measurements for the upcoming weeks. If you don't have microsoft excel, you can upload the excel sheet to google spreadsheets. All you need is a gmail account to do so, and if you don't, they are free to make.