I know your story.
You decide to make your fitness a priority. You start working out daily. After a few weeks you don’t notice any progress, so you abandon your goals. Time passes and soon you decide to try again. Rinse. Repeat.
Let me help you break this cycle!
Progress doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time, effort and commitment. To help you stick to your goals, the best way is to track your progress. The changes in your body and the way you feel are wonderful motivators. Tracking your progress increases the likelihood of you reaching your goals and using your time efficiently. You will want to continue working when you see that your clothes fit differently or you can lift more.
How do you know if you are doing it right? Here are a few ways that you can track your progress. You might have to experiment to discover what works for you.
Keep an exercise journal: An exercise or workout journal can be a great way to document what you are doing. You can use a paper and pen, use an excel sheet, an app or notes on your phone.
Write down the exercises you performed, the sets and reps and if you used weights , then that too. If you went for a run, note down the distance and time. Don’t forget to note if you found it easy or difficult. How did you feel after it? Were you energised or tired?
Use your exercise journal to track your food too. After all only exercise can never get you yo your fitness goals. I wouldn’t recommend counting each calorie, but you can right down your meals to see if you are snacking too often. Pay attention to the fact if you are missing on nutritious and whole food.
Take this journal to educate yourself to make your workout and nutrition better.
2. Use fitness trackers or Apps: Fitness trackers come in handy when you want to let technology take the lead. Fitness trackers, smartwatches & apps show and save a lot of meaningful data from your workouts.
Apps: Many people have smartphones and there are a variety of apps available to track your steps, workout and diet. A lot of them come with a feature to make notes ans add reminders.
Smartwatch: Smartwatches have a lot of different capabilities and features that can help you track your workout. A key difference from the app version is its ability to monitor heart rate and save the data, which can give a great insight into the amount of work your body is putting in the workout and to sustain itself.
3. Take progress photos: Taking photos to show progression is a decades old methodology. Before starting the program take full length pictures of yourself from the front, back and sides. After a specific period of time (monthly or quarterly) take the same angles again. Most times you will see a lot more difference in your pictures than the scale. This is because you are probably losing fat and gaining muscles!
4. Performance Goals: This can not only help you track your fitness perfectly but also help you create a more positive relationship with exercising. These goals can include any kind of fitness feat you’d like to achieve, whether it’s lifting a specific weight or nailing a certain exercise.
5. The fit of your clothes: Taking note of how your clothes fit you can be a good measure of your fitness progress. Muscle is more dense than fat but takes up less space. Especially if fat loss is your goal, the scale may stay the same even as you progress. At the same time, your clothes begin to fit a little looser.
6. Test yourself: You might not like taking tests, but benchwork workouts and exercises can be a great way to analyse your progress. You can do this with time, weight to reps. How much time you take to finish the same workout, how much more heavier you can lift, how many more reps can you do? You can come up with a specific test that fits right for your training program.
7. Check your blood pressure: Progress is a lot more than just looking good. Whether you want to gain muscle or lose weight, blood pressure can give you an accurate depiction of your overall health.
8. Hop on the scale: The scale is often a go-to way to measure weight loss. However, the scale doesn’t tell you the complete truth. Weight fluctuates daily based on water retention and bowel movements. Salty foods, watery veggies, soups, excess carbs and alcohol cause your body to retain water. Measure once every month first thing in the morning after using the rest room.
9. Take measurements: Body measurements can be a great way to track your progress. Tracking your body composition goals with basic measurements to see if you are decreasing or increasing inches in specific areas of the body may help you determine more about your fitness routine’s efficacy. Your weight can fluctuate throughout the day depending on various factors. Using a tape measure can keep an eye on those fluctuations as well. Also, remember that muscle weighs more than fat; and you may lose fat and gain muscle simultaneously. So if you’re working towards a fat loss goal, you may see the number go up on the scale, but may still be progressing towards your goal of decreasing fat mass.
10. Set a reward for your milestones: What might seem to be an unachievable task, if taken all together, will appear much easier when you break it down into smaller goals. Divide your plan for your fitness goals into multiple small parts and set a reward for each time you achieve it. Make sure these rewards are not counter productive to your progress and goals!
Finally, being physically fit doesn’t mean having a buff body or six pack abs. Fitness is about a lot of different factors that determine your endurance, health and strength and not just aesthetics. Physical inactivity can expose you to a myriad of health conditions like heart disease, diabetes, muscle and joint problems and mental health issues.
It is imperative to be active and find a fitness program that fits in with your goals and lifestyle. Happy working out!
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