Since I have started my new diet lifestyle change a little over a month ago, I have kept a running log of the metrics I feel are most appropriate for not only measuring change and progress, but ones that also correlate to overall health and well-being and weight loss. Things such as:

Weight (everyday)
Food intake (almost every meal)
Calorie intake (as often as possible)
Water consumption
Body measurements (waist, hips, both thighs) (every morning after weighing)
Cholesterol (LDL, HDL, total, free)
Testosterone levels (total, free)

And now I’ve added one more thing: body fat percentage and body composition (fat vs. lean mass). I did all of this by hopping inside a BodPod which just looks like a spaceship capsule. I do not pretend to understand how it works entirely besides creating a pressure differential and then doing some other crazy stuff and spitting out my measurements, good or bad. It provides a lot of good data: fat mass, lean mass, weight, estimated RMR, estimated TEE, and estimated caloric intake based on RMR and activity level. Well, here are my test results.

My BodPod results

So here we see my weight (205.2lbs, which was actually 3lbs heavier than my own scale at home weighed an hour after I took the test), my fat mass of 23.1%, and lean body mass of 76.9%. Except for the weight, which I knew was incorrect, these numbers are slightly higher than I expected them to be. I only predicted I would be in the 18%-20% body fat range but being 3.1% higher than that was not much of a surprise. The weight was surprising since I had weighed 201.5lbs about six hours before and I knew it was not correct because after I got home from the testing center, I weighed myself at 202.5lbs. I did this by taking a 3lb bag of sugar and weighed it on both my food scale (which read 3lb 5oz) and my personal scale (which read 3.5lbs on the nose). Despite this weight discrepancy, my results are just about right — changing the weight would only make a 1% difference or so. So what does this mean for my weight loss now? Am I disappointed in my results despite having lost 17lbs in total? All good questions.

Am I disappointed in the results? No, and why would I be?! I have dropped 17lbs in total since I switched to a primal/paleo diet and I have dropped nearly nine inches in size over the areas I measure (waist, hips, thighs). This includes a three inch reduction in my waist and a one inch reduction in my hips. My thigh measurements are bouncing around the same numbers everyday because I have had fairly large thighs since working out in high school, I simply never lost the bulk but now it is more fat than muscle! Now that I have these results of fat vs. lean mass, what does that mean for my weight loss plan going forward? Well, that is pretty simple. Since I now know my lean body mass, I can calculate how much protein I should be consuming per day to support and stimulate muscle growth and repair. This is one of the most important factors of my current plan because this diet has allowed me to recover more quickly after my running sessions with little to no pain the next day if I have a high protein meal the night of my run. So now I can take my total protein intake and optimize it for consumption over the day, with a focus on adding more to my lunch and bulking it up on dinners after I exercise. Being able to correctly and accurately evaluate my protein needs will then further allow me to optimize my dietary planning overall. I can now say, with more precision, that I need to eat X amount of meat per day and make sure to eat Y amount of vegetables; I like to try and keep a 2:1 or 3:1 ratio of vegetables to meats each day. Some days I hit those ratios, some days I do not and trust me, when I do not, I know it the next day.

I will go back in a few months to get another measurement, probably around September or October. This will be perfect since I am getting another blood panel conducted in the next two to four weeks to make sure my other metrics (cholesterol, testosterone, etc) are still within healthy limits and are helping me stay healthy and not putting me further at risk. I hope that, by then, I will reduce my love handles to simply ‘like’ handles or something silly like that but we will see then.

Disclosure: I was not paid by nor contacted by COSMED USA/BodPod to write anything about their product, I have absolutely no connection to them. I used it because it is more accurate than fat calipers and is the standard body measurement tool for the NFL. If football teams trust it, I figure I can as well.