Ready to take control of your health and fitness? One of the best places to start is looking at your body composition and taking steps to improve it, so you can ensure lifelong wellness. 

Body composition, unlike weight or BMI, better tells the story of full-body health. However, because discussing body composition is not as common, it can be hard to understand exactly how to approach changing your body composition with a pointed focus on improvements. 

In this article, we will discuss some of the different ways you can improve your body composition, as well as how to track any changes in your body composition to ensure optimal success. 

Changing Body Composition with Nutrition

Anyone wanting to know how to improve their body composition should start with nutrition. What you eat and drink makes the biggest impact on your body composition. Beginning your journey changing your body composition with food will give you the most control over the outcome. 

To start, think about what you’re eating every day. Most dietitians and nutritionists recommend keeping a log of what you eat and drink for an entire week — without changing your habits. Include additional information about your eating habits like time of meals and amount of food. The main thing you want to capture is how many calories you’re eating. You also want to get a better picture of the types of foods you’re eating so you can begin tracking macronutrients (carbohydrates, protein, fats). 

Once you’ve captured this information, you will need to start making changes. The first thing to consider is if you are eating more or less calories than you are using each day. If you are eating more calories than you use, then you will gain weight, likely in the form of fat. Consuming food and drink in a calorie deficit will lead to weight loss. 

Calories are just the baseline though. Many individuals on a journey with their body composition also pay a lot of attention to macros. By tracking macros in tandem with calories, you can maximize your weight loss. Looking at macros allows you the freedom to give your body exactly what it needs. An online calculator can help you with determining what your macros should be based on your gender, weight, and activity level. 

Optimizing Your Fitness Routine to Change 

After you’ve considered how nutrition will fit into your plan to improve your body composition, it’s time to consider if your workout routine is working for you and helping you meet your goals. Not all exercise is created equally. 

If you are used to doing only cardio, like running or cycling, then you may not be seeing too many changes to your body composition. This is because these types of fitness activities don’t necessarily focus on body sculpting, which can change how your body looks. 

We recommend focusing on strength and resistance training to optimize your fitness routine and improve your body composition. Often, by building muscle in a particular area, you are more likely to burn fat and your body’s appearance may change. Sometimes these changes happen even if you don’t lose weight. 

Work on developing a fitness plan that caters to your interests, but also fits with your body composition and fat loss goals. If you are new to strength and resistance training, starting with bodyweight exercises like lunges, push-ups, and planks are a great place to start. As you progress, consider incorporating circuit or HIIT training into your routine. Some fitness enthusiasts just prefer to do simple weight training routines at a gym, either on the weight machines. 

Anyone new to this type of training may benefit from hiring a coach or personal trainer to work with you on this part of your journey. 

Cultivate a Healthy Lifestyle 

Once you’ve nailed down your diet and fitness routine, there are a couple other small changes you can make to improve your body composition. 

First, ensure you are getting enough sleep every night. We need sleep for our body to function and feeling well-rested makes a huge impact on our day. When we’re tired, we tend to eat more in an effort to get more energy for our body. Prioritizing sleep lets you operate at maximum efficiency. 

If you know you struggle with sleep, consider implementing some sleep health tactics so you can get a good night of rest.

You may also want to consider your alcohol consumption. Alcohol and alcoholic drinks can be chock-full of calories. Additionally, alcohol causes inflammation in the body, which can make you feel worse. Luckily, many bars and breweries now offer non-alcoholic drinks and mocktails!

When you work toward improving your body composition, you really are working toward living your healthiest possible life. 

Tracking Your Body Composition Progress

When tracking body composition, you want to look at your measurements and see how they change over time. This process is cumbersome with a traditional tape measure, and while progress photos are a good method to look at change, they don’t tell the full, numerical picture. 

A tool like ZOZOFIT makes it easy to see your measurements in real time. The ZOZOFIT app uses your phone’s camera to take your body measurements. Our 3D scanning technology is incredibly accurate and provides you with a full picture of your overall health, including body fat percentage. 

With ZOZOFIT’s side-by-side comparison and ColorMetric tools, you can see how your body composition changes between scans. If you want to get away from the numbers associated with the traditional scale, ColorMetric — which displays this information visually using colors — might be the perfect option for you. 

We recommend completing a scan every two weeks or every month. You want to make sure there’s enough time so you can see changes between the scans, which may not be noticeable if you scan everyday or even every week.  

As you track your progress, be sure to reward yourself when you meet your goals or hit specific milestones. It’s seriously important to celebrate when your hard work pays off!