Am I healthy ?: The ten best ways to measure your health and your fitness

How is health measured? It depends on who you ask. A doctor can measure health in terms of laboratory values: cholesterol, blood sugar, etc. A personal trainer could tell you that your body fat percentage is the best indicator of good health. You can base it on what the scale tells you or how your clothes fit.

I am a great believer in monitoring all these things and something more. It seems like a great job, but in reality it only takes a few minutes to do each one, involves low-cost equipment or can be a regular part of a visit to your doctor. I call them "The Ten Great Measures of Health and Physical Condition".

Weight

BMI (Body Mass Index)

Body composition

Measurements

Resting and target heart rates

Cardiorespiratory fitness

Energy level

Blood pressure

Glucose & cholesterol

Pain

 Why keep track of all these things? First, because there is not a single good way to define what makes a person healthy or fit. For example, just because you have a healthy weight does not mean you do not have high cholesterol. In addition, it can be discouraging to use only one method. You may find yourself in a situation where, even if you have not lost weight in a given week, you may have lost inches.

Monitoring various health and fitness indicators helps you get a complete picture of your whole being. We do not judge our children in a single subject at school, right? And just because the child does not perform well in mathematics does not mean he does not excel in other subjects. And just because you have not lost any weight on the scale does not mean your waistline is not decreasing.

Second, we have all heard the adage, "a definite problem is 95% solved". Knowing the target ranges for health indicators such as weight, body fat and BMI can help you define what you need to work. Avoid unnecessary changes and difficulties by having the correct information. For example, someone with good cholesterol levels does not need an ultra low fat diet.

Third, it serves as a point of inspiration to see how far you have come. Since the changes you are making will be small and incremental, it can sometimes be discouraging not to see the manifest progress. However, by tracking a variety of physical status indicators, it is easier to see, in black and white, all the progress you are making.