Field notes · Restarting and goals
Tracking without obsessing: what to measure after 40
Some men track nothing and have no idea if anything is working. Others track everything and let a single weigh-in ruin their morning. There is a middle.
Dai Manuel · Coach Moose · Vancouver
The short list
Waist measured at the belly button once a week. Daily steps. Roughly how many hours you slept. A couple of strength numbers, like push-ups in a row or the weight on a goblet squat. And a simple tick for whether you did your daily habit.
Waist is the one I would keep if you only track one. It tells you more about health risk than weight alone.
Keep it in its place
Look at trends over weeks, not days. Weight swings with water, salt and sleep. If you weigh yourself, use a weekly average.
And if tracking starts making you anxious, pull back to the habit tick alone for a month. The point of a number is to help you decide, not to decide how you feel.
Common questions
- How often should I weigh myself?
- Daily with a weekly average, or once a week at the same time. Either works. The trend matters, not any single reading.
- What waist size is healthy for men?
- Health Canada and many guidelines flag a waist over 102 cm (40 inches) as higher risk for men. Lower thresholds apply for some ethnic groups.
Sources
- Health Canada, Canadian guidelines for body weight classification in adults
- The 2% Solution, Dai Manuel