It is important to clearly define what your health and fitness goals are in order to gauge how you can improve your body shape and body composition. Different goals will result in different approaches to what exercise and lifestyle choices are needed to achieve your ideal body shape and body composition. 

 

A great starting point is to understand the normative values for ideal weight, fat, muscle and total body water for your age, height and gender. This information will help with the setting of realistic goals and help plan out what areas of body shape and body composition you need to improve.

 

Some sources of information can be found here:

Healthy weight -  https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/healthy-weight/height-weight-chart/

Total Body water - http://support.fqscore.com/body-composition/why-is-hydration-important

Body Fat - http://support.fqscore.com/body-composition/body-fat

 

Nutrition and exercise work hand in hand when looking to reach our goals and improve our overall health and fitness. 

 One approach to decreasing weight/ fat is through being in a calorie deficit. This is where you burn more calories than you're consuming. https://www.livestrong.com/article/452941-how-do-i-create-a-calorie-deficit-for-weight-loss/

 Increase weight/muscle can be done through being in a calorie surplus. This is where you consume more calories than you're burning; however a balanced diet is key in order not to increase fat mass too much. https://www.livestrong.com/article/297438-how-many-calories-does-it-take-to-gain-1-pound/

 We advise that you speak to a professional before making any drastic changes to your lifestyle, to ensure that you are doing so in a safe and responsible way that will positively impact your health and fitness.

 We would also advise that you remember that when measuring yourself you should be consistent in the timing and body state when the measurements are done as these have a significant influence on the results and to also focus on trends rather than individual measurements.