Been into fitness and healthy lifestyle for a while now?
Here comes the best part and the biggest motivation of all – tracking your results.
Yes!
And today I’m going to prove why those numbers matter and why you should track your results especially if you’re really serious about making some changes to your lifestyle and want to start getting in shape for real.
Just let’s get one thing straight – by tracking your results I don’t mean just stepping on the scale every day and freaking out every time it goes up.
Instead of that, I suggest a plan that allows you to find the right path and keep up with it.
And again, please don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying that those numbers you’ll track determine who you are, because they really don’t.
We always make the mistake of taking those numbers emotionally when we really shouldn’t – in fact they can only help us see if we’re on the right way.
The data you collect about your progress is going to help you and I am going to show you how much writing everything down and tracking your step by step results means in fitness.
Let’s start now!
Why Is Tracking Your Results SO Important?
First of all they’re showing us if we’re doing everything right, meaning training and nutrition.
Sometimes we think we eat healthy when we actually don’t and other times we go to the gym stuck on the cardio machine for hours and we still can’t get the scale moving.
That’s why tracking results is crucial in finding out if you’re on the right track.
PS: If you don’t know what’s healthy and what’s not, and don’t really know where to start, grab my nutrition plan ASAP!
Second is motivation.
When you track your weight loss progress right, you’re getting a clear picture of how everything you’re doing is paying of.
At first it may not be as visual, so weighting and measuring yourself will get you the progress on paper.
And there’s nothing more motivating than to see how far you’ve come and that your efforts are paying off.
By getting the whole picture of your progress, you’ll learn what works for you best, get some boost in your motivation that will keep you striking to achieve more and more.
But what should you track?
We’re finding out right now!
1. Measuring Your Body With A Tape
Tracking the changes to your body circumference measurements is the first thing you should do.
This is one of the most common tracking methods, especially for those into fitness, since it gives you the inches you’ve lost around certain areas
The things you can measure are:
- Waist
- Bust
- Hips
- Tights
- Arms
- Calves.
I’ve packed a guide on how to do it right, so head on to check it out.
2. Weighting Yourself
Next is weighting yourself… but first I have to talk to you about something even more important – scales.
Well, they have been on the bad word for far too long now, and we have to cut it out.
Girls, why do we all fear the scale so much?
Scales shouldn’t determine how we feel, in fact they are just this helpful tool we could use to get to know how much we weight and there’s nothing we should fear about.
And aside the emotional insecurities they cause, scales have been on the bad word and there’s a good reason for that:
They don’t give you the whole story about your body or your weight loss progress (or at least most of them don’t).
Why?
Because besides fat, they are measuring everything else: muscle, bones, organs and even momentary hydration, water retention and food you’ve had.
“The human body is one incredibly complex piece of machinery.
There are things going in, coming out, transforming, and dissolving all of the time.
As a result, your weight can fluctuate wildly over the course of a 24-48 hour period. Depending on what you ate today, how much water you drank, if there was sodium in your food, what kind of clothing you were wearing, what time of day you weigh yourself, your weight WILL be different.”
Steve, Nerd Fitness
Oh the countless times I myself have been stressing out about those stupid numbers that vary from one day to another.
Also, this explains the fact that even though I look fit today, have abs and all other kinds of muscles all over my body and I feel amazing, I still have almost the same weight as when I was not fit, had fat around my body, muffin top etc.
That’s because muscles may take less space then fat, but they weight more than fat.
And all of that is try – BUT this doesn’t means that when tracking the weight loss progress we should leave scales out of the picture.
It only means that we just have to learn to use them right, and I’m just about to show you how.
The Right Way to Use the Scale
First of all, avoidday-to-day weigh-ins orlooking at single weigh-ins.
The issue with comparing daily weigh-ins is that it’s pretty hard to tell if your weight change is due to fat or from body fluid/content fluctuations (that’s why some even suggest that you should measure theweekly weight average, be we shouldn’t go that far).
I’d suggest to always measure at the same time of the day, maybe in the morning and never right after a workout.
The fact is that scale is a wonderful tool to measure your results but when you combine it with your body fat percentage.
That way you will know all of your numbers and get the full picture.
This means that besides the weight of our body, we should consider some other factors such as how much out of that is fat, muscle, bone structure, organs, water retention etc.
And that’s where the nowadays smart scales does the trick.
The HAMSWAN Wireless Smart Body Fat Scale I use is actually a wireless body composition analyzer that’s designed with ITO technology to measure your body data with high accuracy.
This means that when you step on this scale you’re getting the full picture by taking in consideration 8 measured parameters:
- Body weight
- Bone mass
- Body fat
- Muscle mass
- Body water
- Visceral fat
- BMI (Body Mass Index)
- BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate)
This means that this smart scale gives you a full report of your body with high accuracy in just a few seconds.
Plus, it’s connected to an app andauto generates graphs, storing up data up to 10 users.
You just have to download their app “New iwellness” on Apple store or Google Play to sync data (Fitbit, Google and Apple Health) via Bluetooth connection, and just step on the scale.
I started using the smart scale just a while ago and I really like all of the info I get from it, almost everything I need to know to maintain a healthy and balanced life.
Especially the info about my muscle mass, since I exercise daily I really feel like that’s good to know.
As you probably already know, I stopped eating sugar few years back, but there’s another “white colored enemy” I still deal with in almost every meal and that is salt.
So, from the info I got from the Hamswan smart scale, I found out there was nothing to worry about since the water retention was not that bad.
With this kind of scale you can get the reality standing behind every single one of those numbers, showing you whether you’re losing the right kind of weight – fat.
Head on to check it out atHAMSWANannnd use the codeTHANKU10to get $10onany $30 order :)
Now, To Solve The Emotional Touch Of Scales
Don’t use scales or any other measuring methods to make you feel good or bad about yourself.
Instead, use them as guidelines and motivations to always strive for better.
You have to be honest with yourself if you want to succeed, and that stands for almost everything in life especially when it comes to fitness.
So, use those numbers to become better and make you strive to achieve more – let them guide you through fitness to make better choices in future.
One day, when you get there, those charts and tracks would mean so much more.
3. Progress Photos
Progress photos aka before and after photos are by far my favorite method for tracking physical progress and changes.
Since they are visual, they make tracking so much more inspiring.
Sure, collecting the data and seeing how the numbers change over time is amazing,but it’s nothing compared to the motivation you get from seeing the changes in the physical appearance.
This is mainly because we see ourselves daily and it’s pretty difficult to notice any changes from just looking at the mirror.
But that’s the best thing with progress photos – you’ll have snapshots from different points in your journey that’ll make it easy to see how your body changed and how much results you actually have.
However, you should know how to take these photos so that you could get realistic results.
We come across 2 seconds transformations all the time, where people take a picture with relaxed and usually pretty bad posture and then one when flexed with good posture, and they look like they’re taken from totally different points, when they’re actually taken just a few seconds apart.
We don’t want to do that, we want to get actual results.
So, here are some tips for taking progress pictures:
- Wear a sport bra with bikini or a swimsuit
- Take three relaxed photos: front, side, and back
- Always use the same background, clothing, lighting and shooting distance
- Take the photos at the same time of day each time.
Here’s my progress photo:
Also, here’s a before and after of few girls I’ve been working with and that have been using my nutrition plan.
This is Lina, the both pictures are taken in August, one year apart.
And this is Marty, she didn’t want to take pictures of her for the before and after, but I packed something to show the difference to all of you.
Now It’s Your Turn!
Start collecting the data about your progress right now!
I’ve also designed a cute and inspiring fitness planner for all of you planning and trucking addicts out there.
So, head on to check it out!
You can write down every single detail, result, progress, meal, workout and almost anything you want to track.
And remember, if you write it you’ll do it!
Till next time babes
xo
Monica
