What measurements or metrics should we take and record ? which ones can we do ourselves – and interpret what’s happening and which ones should we request from a helpful doctor ?
When I first wrote the post about formulating a S.M.A.R,T, plan I trust that I kept the M (Measurement) as simple as I could make it with the inevitable result that I was measuring the wrong thing right from the start and never got around to working out what I should be measuring – for example measuring crude body weight vs working out my level of visceral fat. In this post I want to put a few mistakes right and explain why the most common measurement, simple weight, is both the wrong one to pay attention to and is often misleading.
Measurement or Metric though : lets deal with that one first.
I think I said before that the very first time that I came across SMART as a principle was when I was a low level open canoe coach and at a time when all paddling related sports were thrown together in a great big melting pot by the then BCU under the title Paddlesport : I for one never saw my back country canoeing as sport but more as a branch of bushcraft travel and expedition skills. Nevertheless, to proceed as a coach I was also expected to get some basic experience in teaching kayak skills and as part of that I attended a coach development course at the National Mountain Center (PYB) – go figure ! .
That course must have really ground my gears as around that time I stopped going to the Brenin apart from when they asked me to run a first aid course or teach on their expedition paddling symposium. I was obviously becoming a difficult character because the BCU and by extension PYB were going off in some weird, committee led direction that left simple canoeists such as myself somewhere back in the weeds.
That course was a lot about the development of younger paddlers for competitive paddle sports such as kayak slalom and point scored artificial rapid running and one of the first theoretical sessions was how to use SMART as a training tool for setting sport related goals. I remember that the presenter talked through the meaning of SMART but when he got to the M that I use to say Measurement he started talking about sport Metrics and I remember asking, somewhat pointedly if what he meant was Measurement ?. He did and I was moved to comment that he was trying to sound like some US military commanders frequently using Metrics to stand for something that actually meant ground taken and bad guys taken out.
However and whatever – I digress.
The talk and seeming actual obsession with weight loss is almost total and it’s been driving the diet industry (Weightwatchers and suchlike) for years if not decades. I regard weight loss as a highly variable and crude measurement at best which is why I don’t make it my main focus of achievement and really only use it to keep a kind of score and to tell myself how much additional weight to load into my rucksack for training with : it’s not a goal in itself.
Please allow me to take you on another short analogy so :
In 2026 we’re hearing a lot about GLP-1 Agonist drugs such as Mounjaro : both the good and the bad. For my part I now accept that they might be a useful drug for managing Type 2 Diabetes : for a bit of context I had to know my way around most of the common drugs used in that condition as I had to advise patients on which ones to stop or when to stop before the procedures that we performed in the Endoscopy department.
Type 2 Diabetes is one thing but intentional use of the drug to cause weight loss only is something different and it seems to be spreading among the A list media celebrities and media influencers – ie the useless and self important people. What is already happening is that overweight/obese people are using the drug and reporting startling amounts of weight loss with no effort required other than a weekly subcutaneous injection. What is actually happening is that they are losing weight rapidly and only some of that is the dangerous visceral fat but there is almost always a loss of muscle. Then, when the drug is stopped the person’s hunger rebounds and the weight piles back on : except that weight is fat weight and usually not muscle mass unless the patient/client has magically taken up resistance training while being a user or during it’s withdrawl.
Iv’e often said that the best time for my fitness and overall health was when I trained with free weights in a local gym. During that one of the things that I used to do, almost obsessively at one point, was a weekly weight which I used to keep a graph of. What I found early on is that my body weight bounced all over the place and it took me a while to realize that it was my fluid balance that was all over the place, If for instance I had worked the awful pattern that we often did which was days and nights in the same week then my weight would be up due to my stress response and I only later discovered as also due to my insulin related water retention.
One time when I was exercising hard and beginning to press larger plates I found that my weight actually crept up a bit and it took a while to grasp the fact that I was gaining a small amount of muscle mass : most of my exercise routine was the kind of compound exercises that are known to be actively muscle mass producers. Just one time, when I thought that I was doing well I jumped on a friend’s weigh scales that could calculate visceral fat and I was surprised and a little shocked at how high mine still was.
As I said at the start : it’s now my second cycle so i’m digging a bit deeper on the basic stuff that I did in week one. This cycle i’m less interested in what the bathroom scales have to say unless we swap our old and basic ones for a more modern version that give a calculated estimate of visceral fat. That such scales exist is a fact as my personal trainer contact has a set and iv’e been on them. The problem with them is that their estimate/calculation of visceral fat is approximate at best and is said not to be able to measure small changes, What i’m doing right now is even simpler : i’m throwing a tape measure around my belly once a month and seeing if that shows any change : if it does I will be one happy fella.
The gold standard for visceral fat measurement is either a DXA scan or a MRI scan although as far as I know you would only be able to get one if you were seeing a physician privately and either are going to be expensive – I have no idea how much a single slice MRI scan would cost privately and no NHS GP is going to send you for one as it then comes off their budget.
I did wonder as well about taking some simple limb/muscle circumferences to see if there’s any change in my muscle bulk in the largest and most easy to measure places – quads and calves seem a good place as they’re both affected by doing squats as a routine exercise.
When I come back to M for measurement in cycle three I intend to dive into what blood markers might be useful to measure and mark and how to interpret same : i’m thinking here of how to understand something as basic as a random blood glucose vs taking a Hb A1C, what a fasting glucose and a fasting insulin might tell us and which numbers might tell us about visceral fat function rather than mere mass/content.
Until then, best wishes Y’awl
Dirty Wet Dog, the great adventure. 