Not a Diet Book

This is not to say there are no honest calliper readers out there. I’m just giving some context to one of the many issues I see in the realm of anthropometry (which is the nerd term for all of this). Another issue I see with the entire thing is the following hypothetical situation:

John comes in to see me for a personal-training session; he confesses he’s a lazy shite and needs to be more active and improve his diet. John knows he has 20kg to lose. I know he has 20kg to lose. He’s a little apprehensive about the gym in general; he’s worried about me judging him, others judging him and generally being outside of his comfort zone. I not only charge John a small fortune for the session, but before we even get going I am supposedly going to take him into a room, get him to undress down to his underwear and then pull away pinches of his fat before telling him he’s got a lot of it.

John will go home, his wife will ask, ‘How was your first day?’ He’ll reply, ‘Yeah, I got naked and had my fat pinched and recorded for forty-five minutes while I stood still.’ He knows he has fat to lose – he’s not an idiot.

This is not to say that’s not how to do it – it’s just not my approach. If it was up to me, I’d say let’s leave callipers to those leaner populations who have much less noticeable fat reductions, who actually could need a reading.

We now know that scales can correctly track weight fluctuations, but are not necessarily representative of progress, and therefore not great for headspace and motivation. We have all kinds of rays, impedances and fat-pulling techniques, but what is the verdict from me?

Take a picture, mate. Since you got your smartphone a few years ago, you’ve taken pictures of your food every time you eat out, and each day you snap all kinds of photos you’d never have dreamed of taking before. Ever see someone take a picture of their meal with a disposable back in the day? Me neither.

My best advice for you to track your progress is to take photos. Let’s imagine this is a scientific experiment, so let’s try to keep any variables as similar as possible. These include time of day (I suggest first thing), location, lighting and hydration. These all play a role in this, so let’s control these and any other factors that can influence the outcome as far as possible. I’m sorry to say it, but I’ve had lawyers, doctors and people in pretty important jobs telling me that they can’t see a difference in their photos when there clearly is one. If you’re not sure, you can always get another set of eyes on it.

You don’t find good lighting; good lighting finds you.

* Some smartarse at some point will want to differentiate a calorie from a kcal – for the purposes of this book, all calorie mentions refer to kcals (kilocalories). A banana that contains 100 kcals technically contains 100,000 calories, but this book is not about comparing penis sizes, so let’s carry on.

† To use my calorie calculator head to www.jamessmithacademy.com/calculator.

‡ Everyone has rolls when they lean forward. I feel even people in good shape sit in the bath or on the toilet pinching their rolls of fat like they are alien – well, they’re not; they’re normal.

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