What are your favorite ways to measure your own health?

vingtcinqunvingtcinq
Mon, 01 Sep 2025 17:09:00 +0000

A lot of people are familiar with body fat percentage, BMI, etc. Personally, my BMI has been 'better' when I've been less healthy, and generally worse as I've been more healthy. Body fat percentage is difficult to actually measure. So every few months, I look for metrics that fit my biases. For example:

Jeff Nippard's Noob to Freak Benchmarks - I like these primarily because it's a multiplier on bodyweight. Additionally, he makes a good argument for why you'll never get past "Intermediate" due to the work and sacrifices required.

StrengthLevel - If you want to compare yourself to people of similar weight, age, and gender. You can see the "novice", "intermediate", etc. break downs of your lift for your cohort.

Ready for Labour and Defence was a USSR and now modern Russia series of benchmarks of health. It includes pull-up goals as well as how far you can throw a grenade. Can't say I've applied these but I like the concept.

Anime Workout - Solo-Levelling, One-Punch Man. Why wouldn't you want to be an anime hero?

If possible, explain why it's your "favorite." Can be everything from accuracy, to ease of application, or you just being really good at it.

For me:

Squat, Deadlift, and Bench - 1x Bodyweight x 10 reps (e.g., a barbell squat where you're lifting your body weight) - I like the idea that I can truly support my own weight.

Being able to do unassisted pullups

100 push ups, 100 pull ups, 100 squats - it's completely arbitrary, based on a base 10 number system, but for that same reason it just feels like a good "benchmark."

Your 30 minute run distance / speed - 30 minutes is relatively long, so I like it as a measure of realistic improvement, rather than thinking about outlier improvements in speed or distance that might go away the next week.

Enough hours of sleep and a normal sleep schedule for 1 month - This is hard for me, but feels great when I'm in the swing of it.

Doing some kind of activity every day for at least 1 month - Even if it's just 15 minutes of stretching, I know that it means something to "try."

Comments URL: https://tildes.net/~health/1pxw/what_are_your_favorite_ways_to_measure_your_own_health

Votes: 24

Comments: 24