Next time you step on the bathroom scales, remember they’re only telling you part of the story.

The term ‘weight-loss’ has to be one of the biggest misnomers of the century. Strange that, especially when you consider the weight-loss industry in the US alone has an estimated worth of over $60 billion (€53bn). How could such a huge and powerful industry not even have an accurate name?

Would you be happy with a 2kg loss of weight in one day? Chances are you might relish the thought, but would you still be happy if those 2kgs made absolutely no difference to your appearance?

Anybody can step inside a sauna and drop a couple of kilograms, but guess what, you’ll put them right back on again as soon as you drink enough water to quench your thirst.

Kilograms on the scales actually tell us very little, yet this is how we tend to measure the success of weight-loss programmes and products. Some of us are even willing to pay dearly for weight loss that is sometimes little more than an illusion.

While it is true that we want to lose weight, it is not true that just any type of weight will do. The body is made up of different structures and types of tissue. There is muscle in there, bone, and internal organs, to name a few. Then there is fat itself, which of course, has weight too. Indeed, all these things have weight, and contribute to that dreaded cumulative number that appears on our bathroom scales.

When the scales tell us we’ve lost weight, we’re happy. When the scales tell us we’re still the same, or worse still, half a kilogram heavier, we’re sad, very sad.

A powerful number indeed, but the truth is it really shouldn’t be, because that’s all it really is, a number. The problem is we don’t know how much of our weight is actually fat weight, and we should only be interested in losing the fat.

If you had to lose five kilograms of fat and gain five kilograms of lean muscle, the scales would show you exactly the same number as before, but do you think your body would look the same? Absolutely not.

You would look entirely dif­ferent, because you have not simply attempted to lose weight, but rather to improve your body composition. Less fat and more muscle is the key.

The problem with this strategy, however, is that we don’t have many effective ways of measuring or tracking it. Body composition testing is a minefield of mis­information and phoney gadgets.

The problem is we don’t know how much of our weight is fat, and we should only be interested in losing the fat

Getting body fat tested accurately to this very day means approaching only a handful of skilled professionals versed in the art of calliper testing. Even this is not the most accurate method, but short of hydrostatic weighing inside a laboratory, the skilled tester can get pretty close.

Accurate body fat testing allows you to charter your progress towards your fat-loss goals and make the necessary changes and adjustments to your exercise and eating routines. This is a process of modification and streamlining that will even­tually lead to the most efficient fat-loss programme for you.

Accurate testing means you won’t get demotivated the moment you start exercising because you apparently gained weight. This is an entirely normal phenomenon related to a increase not in pure muscle mass but in the nutrients and fluids stored in those muscles now that the body is being subjected to a training regimen.

The secret to successful fat-loss is effective body fat testing, but how do the professionals do it? Well, it’s actually not all that complicated. Indeed, armed with a set of callipers, pretty much anybody could perform body fat testing with a little flair for online research and mathematics.

You will need a set of callipers that measures the thickness of skinfolds. In other words, when you pinch the fat from say, your hip, you should be able to clamp the callipers onto that pinched skinfold of fat, and mea­sure how thick it is in millimetres.

There are a range of digital and dial callipers available that are not even specifically designed for body fat testing, yet are more than adequate, as are cheaper versions of body fat callipers that won’t require you to break the bank. With callipers in hand, there are a number of tests you can choose from, however the ‘Eurofit’ four-site test is one of the simplest.

You’ll need to measure pinches from your biceps and triceps, the side of the abdomen just above the hip, and the upper back just beneath the shoulder blade. If you took all your readings from the right side, you’ll need to stick to the right side during future testing to ensure consistency. The official names of these sites for the purpose of further research are biceps, triceps, suprailiac and subscapular.

If you plus all the sites together you will get a total millimetre value, which you can feed into the ‘Durnin/Womersley formula’ – a set of equations based on age and gender, easily available online, that will provide you with a value called ‘body density’.

The body density value must then be fed into another formula, the ‘Siri formula’ – to provide you with the final body fat percentage.

Simply measuring the skinfolds in millimetres alone will be enough to charter your progress if you just want to know if you’re really losing fat or not. So next time you step on the bathroom scales, remember they’re only telling you part of the story.

matthew.muscat.inglott@mcast.edu.mt