Track What Your Body is Up To

I like to see my body as a laboratory, and keep track of how things are going. Through exercise and diet, we should be able to make positive changes and watch them happen. These things can help you do that. This, by the way, is no substitue for care from a licensed healthcare professional. Please read our disclaimer. I’m not a doctor, and I don’t even play one on the Internet.

man tracks body health measurements
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“If it can be measured, it can be managed.” This quote was attributed to Peter Drucker, grand master of management science. Turns out he never said it, and businesses end up measuring and monitoring a bunch of stuff that doesn’t matter, because they are stupid that way. But I digress.

Stuff I use (or want):

[Note: No annoying pop-ups, but please unblock ads so you can see what I’m talking about. When you click the box or buy, I get a little something from Amazon as an affiliate.]

Body composition scales used to be pretty expensive, but can be picked up quite cheaply now. This, and many like it, puts your stats right into your phone, so you can see nice graphs of your trends and progress. They work by sending a tiny electrical signal through your legs while you stand on it. Different materials resist or pass-through the signal at certain frequencies, so the scale can guess how much bone, muscle and fat you have.

Important cautions to the data, however: they are not very accurate, so you should only look for trends. Personally, my weight appears to yo-yo up and down by about 4 lbs over months. As my weight goes, so does my reported lean mass and body fat. That doesn’t make sense! My lean mass (muscle, bones, organs, etc.) should stay fairly constant, unless someone is secretly borrowing parts of me ocassionally. Body fat should be the main variable. So, these things are not perfect in splitting you up. Secondly, it only measures your lower half. If you are female and bigger on top, this device will not appreiate that.

Better ways to Measure

Nothing like good old tape measure and calipers, used for anthropometrics for centuries.

Both of these are fancy because they use springs to measure, so it takes the guess work out of whether you are squeezing harder or softer than your last measurments. There are formulas to estimate your body composition, once you have this data. Funny thing — as you get more fit, your weight may not change or may even go up, because muscle and bone is more dense than fat. With these, you know what’s going on.

Vitally Important

As a medical assistant, I had to memorize the what the Six Vital Signs are. I graduated the program with honors, but I had to look them up again for this.

For a snap shot of how your body is doing, measure these six things: Weight and height, temperature, respiration, pulse, blood pressure, oxygen saturation (SpO2). Most of these you’ve got down. But here’s how you can measure two less common stats:

For the blood pressure monitor, again I like the Bluetooth kind so the data goes right to my phone and I can watch trends overall. They range from $40-$100+. These are budget models that are well rated.

To be honest, a pulse oximeter is mostly a toy. When you exercise and feel out of breath, with this you can know exactly how out-of-breath you are! The more you increase your cardiovascular fitness — important for health and longevity — the more your blood oxygen levels will be at any level of effort.

So, theres what you need to put your body in it’s own little surveillance state and geek out on data.

So, even if you buy all this stuff, it will like just collect dust unless you have some guidance and motivation. Why not schedule a free consultation, or at least contact us with questions or advice. We can chat about your goals and how I can help you reach them. Don’t let your gear join your “Nordic(oa)Track” in storage somewhere.