Rob was not happy this morning when he hopped on the scale to find he has gained 2 pounds after strict allegience to the low-carb diet. In spite of his pants being undeniably loose, he has gained 2 pounds! I understand this frustration as well as I gained one last week! But I also noted lost inches and a reduced body fat percentage since starting the diet. All this simply means, the diet is working, we are both loosing inches of unwanted belly but the scale tells the story differently.

After lunch we stopped at a store to pick up a measuring tape. Now he can see how things are going using the numbers that really matter-measurements (not pounds). It’s too bad he wasn’t able to measure last week when he started as that is a good indicator of how things are going, right away.

I wrote down the places I recommend keeping weekly measures of and also pointed him to the body fat web site I use to calculate my BFI. We guessed at what his current number might be and then multiplied the percentage (25%) times his body weight. The result meant he was carrying 60 pounds of fat in his overall body content. Wow! We then checked how mine had changed and sure enough, even though I had only lost 10 pounds (so far) my fat index measured that to be 14 pounds of fat. Now that is the right kind of progress!

I know this is a lot of numbers, but when you diet, you really need somekind of assurance all the effort isnt going to waste!

This morning Rob gave me his report, “I had to tighten my belt today because it was too loose on the usualy spot!” This is a great indicator that he is on the right track, since men gather most of their excess weight around their belly it makes sense that it would be the most noticeable area when you diet. Still there is no such thing as target weight loss, you loose weight all over, which is why I recommend several measurement zones from head to toe, so you can see how things shift each week.

While ROb is glad to see his gut begin to shrink in such a short time frame, he also mentioned that he got a wicked leg cramp last night. “I woke up at 4am and jumped out of bed! I had this cramp in my leg that wouldn’t stop! It alsted for like 20 minutes!” Ah, the joy of dieting…

I recommended he take a multi vitamin or at least a combination of calcium, magnesium and zinc because your body does need the right nutrition to fix itself. Plus, when you cut out carbs, you are cutting certain foods that provided minerals and vitamins so it makes sense to have some kind of supplement. (I’ve heard muscle cramps are typically a sign you are magnesium defficient.)