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Apr
25
Measure the Meaningful, Not the Measurable
Filed Under Fitness, Weight Loss
The title of this post is a paraphrasing of a famous quote by Warren Buffet, the famous investor who’s one of the wealthiest people in the world today. His point is that lots of things can be measured, but unless those measurements have meaning, then they’re useless.
How Do You Measure Your Health and Fitness?
What are you using as a measurable metric of your health and fitness? That is, what number do you keep track off to see how well you’re doing fitness wise? For almost everyone I talk to, the answer is probably weight. Everyone keeps track of weight, including me. Unfortunately, for most people, the ONLY number being tracked is weight.
We use weight to measure our success in controlling eating. We use it to measure our success at exercise. We even use it to measure our overall health, with people who weigh more being considered less healthy. Well you know what, weight in and of itself is totally useless and if you’re using weight as the sole measure of your fitness, you’re making a big mistake.
What’s Wrong With Using Weight?
- No account for height - Do you really know how much you should weigh? My wife is 6′ tall, how much should she weigh compared to my friend who is 5′2″? How much more weight should your body carry per extra inch of height? Do you know the ideal weight range for your height?
- No account for gender - On average, women have a higher percentage of body fat while men have a higher percentage of muscle mass. So should a man and a woman, both 5′10″ weight the same? Should I at 5′11″ weigh less than my wife at 6′?
- No account for muscle mass - Here’s the worst part about weight. It can actually tell you you’re doing well when you’re getting worse and vice versa. That’s because muscle is dense and fat is only a small percentage of your body. So losing weight could mean losing muscle and that’s a bad thing. If I stopped working out I could lose weight. Sounds odd but it’s true. As my muscle mass shrank, my body would weigh less assuming I controlled my eating. So my weight could go down but my overall health and fitness would decrease. If you started exercising, you might actually gain a bit of weight or at least stay at your current weight because the muscle you’re adding weighs more than the fat you’re losing. However, you’d be far healthier, fitter and slimmer with the added muscle and reduced fat.
So Weight Is A Bad Measurement?
Not completely. In general, weight loss does correspond with increased fitness and health. However, if the only measurement you use is weight, then it’s meaningless since there could be a whole lot of other things going on.
What Other Measurement Should I Use?
- BMI - I’m not a big fan of BMI since it doesn’t take muscle mass into account, but at least it’s more accurate than weight alone. There are numerous websites that can help you measure this.
- Body Fat % - A much more accurate measurement of how good the composition of your body is.
- Resting heart rate - Measure your heart rate when you wake up after a good night’s sleep to see how well your cardiovascular system is doing.
- Active heart rate - Measure your heart rate after 3 to 5 minutes of cardio exercise.
- Strength - There are a variety of these. For example, see how many barbell presses you can do at a rate of one every two seconds. For men, do these with an 80lb weight. For women, a 35lb weight. There are numerous other strength and flexibility tests. A personal trainer can help you with these tests.
- Cholesterol and blood pressure - Have you had your physical this year? If not, why not? I’m a big fan of staying away from the doctor’s office and I try to avoid the “there’s a prescription drug for every minor issue” mentality that a lot of people have, but I do strongly believe in a yearly physical. During this physical your doctor can help you check on a variety of health measurements.
So Which One of These Should I Use?
Ideally? All of them. Now before you panic, keep in mind that you don’t need to track them every day. In fact, that would be a little crazy. Realistically, you should track these monthly or even yearly. For example, I track my BMI and weight once a month. I track my heart rate measurement and do my strength tests every 6 months and I have a physical during which I find out my blood pressure and cholesterol once a year. That’s a pretty minimal amount of time required to get a very detailed picture of how well I’m doing health and fitness wise. I know people who spend far more time than this every month balancing their checkbooks, tracking their friends on Facebook and catching up on the latest episodes of Lost. Are those things really more important than your health?
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Our nation is obsessed with weight. We see it as the holy grail of health when it’s really nothing more than a paper cup filled with misleading data. Combine it with a few other measurements and it might be helpful but on it’s own it’s pretty much useless. So stop treating your health as a one dimensional subject that can be measured with a single number.
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Comments
6 Responses to “Measure the Meaningful, Not the Measurable”
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You said:
“I’m a big fan of staying away from the doctor’s office and I try to avoid the “there’s a prescription drug for every minor issue” mentality that a lot of people have, but I do strongly believe in a yearly physical. During this physical your doctor can help you check on a variety of health measurements.”
I agree with you 100%! I go to doctors for the tests and the diagnostic work, but I insist on making the final decisions about my own life and health.
[...] week or so ago I mentioned that you should be measuring more than just your weight. One of the measures I mentioned was resting heart rate. Well, I got a couple of emails from people [...]
I think it is ok to weight yourself, just no more than once a week as your weight can fluctuate quite a bit. It is certainly a good relative indicator of how you are going.
Your very correct in saying they people often overuse weight as a metric. I do think that it is a reasonable yardstick though, if you use a range of methods to measure. I think that people could weight themselves once to twice per week.
It’s a very reasonable yardstick when used with other measurements.
Gal
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