This part of the Health Club was designed to track your weight loss but it can do more than that. Weight loss is an important goal for many people but we are more interested in making improvements to our metabolic health. When we acheive that, our weight should naturally fall to a healthy level.
The first step is to personalise your tracker. Click on the menu icon at the top right of the overview page.
A list of options appear. Your first step is to open Preferences.
The top half of the Preferences page contains a variety of fields About You. The lower half lets you choose whether to use metric or imperial units for measurements. They all have a drop-down menu for you to choose from. The only exception is Date of Birth. This information is optional but it does help the website admin to know the age range of members.
On the Overview page, you can set a target weight if you want to. This often helps people to be motivated to make changes. Beneath that you can add your latest weight measurement. You can also add back-dated information by clicking on the date.
The notes section can be very useful. Record anything here you feel is relevant: how you are feeling; changes you have made to diet or lifestyle; any medication you are taking (or no longer taking); things you have learnt from this site; how many people have said how well you are looking etc.
You can also add measurements of your waist, chest and hips. These will be displayed on the same chart as your weight. (Units for weight are displayed on the left and units for size are displayed on the right.) Waist measurement is important because too much visceral fat is unhealthy. Our waists should measure less than half of our height: this is regarded as a more useful measure of metabolic health than BMI.
Many people like to have a photograph of themselves before they embark on a lifestyle change so they can compare the new 'me' with the old 'me'. There is a facility here to upload photographs.
Overweight people are at increased risk of high blood pressure and elevated blood glucose levels. Both of these can be reduced by eating a low-carbohydrate, high-fat diet. You can record your progress here. You can also record yes or no to your waist / height ratio.
Please always remember to click Save Entry after recording your measurements.
