Week 5 of Body Recomp – Understanding Your Progress and Final Thoughts
| How to Understand Your Progress While weight is one way to track progress, it can be helpful to use other measures to track how far you have progressed on your Body Recomp journey! Using the weight method to track your progress over time has some limitations and challenges. Firstly, weight doesn’t differentiate between muscle and fat – so while you may have gained muscle and lost fat over the course of these 5 weeks, it won’t reflect this on the scale. Secondly, it’s normal for weight to fluctuate between 2-4lbs over the course of a day, due to a number of factors. So if you are jumping on the scales each morning and notice the number jumping around, it may feel defeating. With this in mind, it’s important to consider other ways to measure your progress when embarking on a health and fitness journey. Not only can it keep motivation high during weeks when there may be a weight plateau, but it’s a great reminder of all the other positive changes that come with a healthier lifestyle. |
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| 1. Body Measurements 📏Taking body measurements of certain areas of your body can give a good indication of body changes, such as fat loss. Sometimes the scale can remain the same, but you might notice you have actually lost inches in certain parts of your body. These were the measurements you were given if you are participating in Drip’s recomp challenge. Feel free to check in with Emily or Nicole should you want to check your body changes: Waist: Measurement right below rib cage, or at the smallest part of torso.Arms: The thickest part of the arm will likely be close to the shoulder where the deltoid feeds into your arm muscles.Hips: Measure around the biggest part of the hips (around the butt).Thighs: Measure around the biggest part of the thighs 2. Progress photo 📸 Choose a form fitting outfit and each month, take a photo of yourself from the front, back and sides. Make sure you take the photos in the same outfit, in the same place, with the same lighting so it’s easier to compare changes. 3. How clothes fit 👚Choose an item of clothing that is a little tight, and try it on every few weeks to see how it fits. Note where it starts to feel loose, and how you feel wearing it. 4. Energy levels ⚡️⭐️Making new lifestyle changes like increasing activity levels and eating healthier can help boost energy levels. Start to notice how your energy levels are changing each week. You could make a note on your phone or on a piece of paper on the fridge to monitor how your energy levels are changing. 5. Sleep quality 🥱 🛏️Good quality sleep is an important part of a healthy lifestyle. When making new lifestyle changes, you might notice sleep quality improving, or increased sleep time. Track sleep with a fitness tracker or by making a note in your phone. 6. Steps taken 👟Tracking steps can be a useful way to assess progress with your activity. Use a fitness tracker to see how many steps, on average, you take each week. Review how your average steps change over time. 7. Strength 💪If you are including exercising in your new healthy lifestyle, you may start to notice your strength improving. Start to notice if you can finish your usual walk 5 minutes faster than when you started, or if you can get through a workout without being out of breath. Celebrating your improved strength is a great way to maintain motivation. FINAL THOUGHTS…There are many variables to take into account in the body recomposition process. You need to look at everything combined to understand your progress and make adjustments. If you’re looking at individual variables you won’t get very far. |
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| Weight Loss Vs Fat Loss Explained(Understanding Energy Balance) To lose weight you need to consume less energy (food) than what your body needs so that it’s forced to use it’s own energy stores. This is what a calorie deficit is. How much food you need to be in a calorie deficit will depend on how much energy you use throughout the day. To really learn how to change your body composition sustainably, you need to understand the energy expenditure side of things too. This is more than just the amount of exercise you’re doing. If you understand this, you’ll see why it’s so important to get those steps up and eat your protein too. You’re more likely to do something if you know the purpose for it, so let’s break it down… Your Total Daily Energy Expenditure or TDEE is all the energy your body uses to go about your daily life. It’s comprised of 4 components:Basal Metabolic Rate/ Resting Metabolic Rate (BMR/RMR)Non Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (NEAT)Thermic Effect Of Food (TEF)Exercise Activity (EA) All of these impact your body composition in different ways!! |
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| UNDERSTANDING ENERGY OUT BMR/ RMRYour body requires energy to keep itself alive even when you’re not doing anything. This is your RMR. Your BMR is pretty much the same thing, except it refers to when you’re asleep. RMR makes up about 60-75% of your TDEE depending on how active you are. You can’t really change your RMR. It’s main contributor is your lean body mass (mostly the energy required by your organs and then some from skeletal muscle). Other factors include genetics, gender, age, and hormone levels. The heavier you are the higher your RMR will be. NEATYou don’t really think about scratching your head, chewing gum or getting up to grab some water. This is your NEAT. It includes any movement you make that isn’t formal exercise. Aiming for a step target each day is a way to ensure your NEAT is higher and is especially important when you’re in a deficit. NEAT is the most adaptive component of your TDEE. In other words, you’re likely to subconsciously move around less when your energy availability is lower. TEFWhen you eat food, it doesn’t just become fat or get excreted. It is broken down by your digestive system into its most basic molecular components, then these are absorbed by the body and utilized for different things (or it can be excreted). This all costs energy and the amount of energy required depends on each different macronutrient. Overall TEF contributes about 10% to your TDEE. However because the different macronutrients vary significantly in their TEF (protein is around 20%, carbs at 6% and fat at 3%), it can increase to around 15% if your diet is higher in protein. EATFormal exercise obviously requires energy and this varies greatly between individuals. Your apple watch and other devices are very bad at estimating the amount of calories used during exercise and since this only account for around 5-10% of your TDEE (unless you’re incredibly active like a trained athlete), it really isn’t worth paying much attention to. You should be exercising to get strong, build muscle or for enjoyment. Focus on getting your NEAT and protein up to help more with fat loss. |
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| HOW TO REALLY SPEED UP YOUR METABOLISM Does having more muscle gives you a faster metabolism? Yes, to an extent, but it doesn’t have the impact you’d think. Muscle only contributes about 20% to your RMR and doesn’t burn much more energy than what fat tissue does. Perhaps you blame your slow metabolism for weight gain as you get older. Your metabolism does slow down as you age however, the amount it does isn’t that significant. Weight gain as you get older is less to do with your metabolism or how much muscle you have, and more to do with your inactivity. Other than gaining or losing weight, you can’t really alter your RMR.But you can “increase your metabolism” by increasing your activity especially your NEAT. Final Thoughts…This is a simplified summary of weight loss vs fat loss and the energy balance equation. In short, if your energy expenditure is higher than your energy intake (calories consumed), then you will lose stored energy from fat. |
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| 5 Things You Must Give Up If You Struggle With Weight Loss 1. Expecting Overnight Results When you don’t see the results you think you should be getting based on the work you’re putting in, you’ll start to lose hope. You’ll make up some excuse like you don’t have enough motivation and give up too soon. What YOU truly need is to set yourself up with realistic expectations! Fat loss takes time. It’s very unlikely you’ll see the results you want to see in a week, and it certainly won’t happen overnight. No matter what kind of diet you put yourself on, it’s going to take weeks to months. If you struggle with weight loss, it’s not usually a matter of needing to do more to speed things up. You simply need to have more patience. 2. Chasing PerfectionIf you’re too focused on being perfect, the first thing you’ll notice when you fall off track is your lack of perfection. You’ll feel bad about yourself, probably miss out on seeing progress that’s meaningful, and you might even give up. Your imperfection doesn’t matter. What does matter is if you see yourself as a failure from one moment of being imperfect. That’s when you’re more likely to sabotage yourself or quit altogether. Focus on all the small forms of progress you’re making. These are what will add up to the big results you want to see. 3. Black and White Thinking When it comes to weight loss, you’re not just working with your body, you also have to work with the environment it’s in. Your environment is always changing. Black and white thinking doesn’t allow for you to accommodate these changes. You need to be able to adapt your diet or exercise routine to changing situations in your life. Then you’ll be able to keep making progress towards your body recomp goals regardless of what’s happening around you. 4. Jumping To Conclusions Jumping to conclusions is reactive. Often it’s based out of fear and will lead to an undesirable outcome. You need to give this up if you struggle with fat loss. There will be moments in your body recomp journey where things aren’t moving as fast as you’d like. You have to push through these moments and stay consistent anyway. If you jump to conclusions like “it never works for me” or “this is pointless”, you’re more likely to give up, and that’s when something doesn’t work. If you kept going, you’d probably find that you were making progress all along- just a lot slower than you thought or hoped should be the case. 5. Pity Party Instead of being that person where “nothing works for me” start being that person that makes things work for you. You have to start showing up for yourself even when you’re having a bad day or you don’t feel like it. Just because you haven’t been able to lose weight in the past, doesn’t mean it won’t work for you ever. If you eat too much one day, it doesn’t mean you’ve ruined your progress and you need to feel bad about yourself. What you focus on grows. If you skipped a workout or went way over your calorie target, accept it, learn a lesson from it, and then move your focus back to what you’ve done right or what you can do right the next day. You have the power to change your life, no matter who you are. Start believing in yourself and make it happen!!! FINAL THOUGHTS…Having the right mindset is going to help you stay consistent and be patient enough to achieve results that last. If you struggle with weight loss, you need to give up the search for quick fixes and instead work on improving your mindset. Reflect on your thoughts and behaviors around your own journey. Hopefully this helps you see areas you can start working on. |
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| Disclaimer: As always, please consult with a healthcare provider before beginning any new exercise program. |
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