Tracking your fitness
The most crucial thing here is to understand that changes are not a matter of one week. It takes time to achieve progress, so you should keep patient and stay motivated along the way.
So you’ve decided to get your body into shape and regular workouts have become a part of your weekly routine. However, after one or two weeks of dedicated workouts you don’t see any results when you look in the mirror and stepping on the scale only confirms it. So you give up, abandon your goal weights and your new sporty lifestyle, until the new year roles in and you’re determined to start once again. It’s high time to break this vicious circle!
The most crucial thing here is to understand that changes are not a matter of one week. It takes time to achieve progress, so you should keep patient and stay motivated along the way. The best solution for following fitness goals is results-tracking.
Your changing body and how you feel constantly performing physical activities are the greatest motivators for moving ahead. By tracking your fitness, the possibility of reaching goals significantly rises and promotes you working and spending your time yet more efficiently. That way, our key task is to identify what ways of fitness progress measuring are the most fruitful and worth incorporating into your physical lifestyle. Let’s figure it out.
Keeping a Workout Journal:
Tracking your fitness results may be easy as pie with steady journal keeping. Noting your exercise and meals is non time-consuming simple way of seeing an overview of your fitness journey, where you can keep track of your weight loss and levels of exercise. You may be surprised with what you find, maybe some meals help you lose weight faster, or certain types of exercise are more effective for you. What works best for you is something you need to figure out through trying different exercises and types of meals, so keeping a little notebook, a fitness app, or even an excel spreadsheet will help you get organised and figure out your fitness routine.
It’s important to be precise when writing down your workouts. Try to include what exercises you did with the sets and rep numbers. If you were working out with weights then jot down what weight you were using and how. If you were running, record your distance and performance time. It’s also important to reflect on how you feel after each workout, exhausted or energised, whether it was harsh or easy. Through this process you can figure out what types of workout routines wok best for you, and which ones don’t. I you ever feel unmotivated then reading your journal and seeing what workouts left you feeling energised and god afterwards may help give you the little push you need to get going.
Your journal is also the perfect tool for tracking your diet. Exercising is required to get fit and lose weight, but proper nutrition goes hand in hand with a healthy and fit lifestyle. If either one of these components is lacking, you’ll find it much harder to achieve your fitness goals. However, that isn’t to say that we can’t still enjoy food. If you worry too much about what you’re eating it may turn into obsessive calorie counting and overly restricted eating, which have their own health risks attached. Tracking your diet is only a way for you to have a overview of what you’re eating, so that you can see what types of foods affect your weight and body more than others. With this knowledge we can limit the amount of food which we know is bad for us, whilst still occasionally enjoying it as a treat.
Fitness Trackers and Apps:
Living in the modern world, we can benefit from various apps and devices which help us track our fitness. You can track your workouts and meals in seconds with apps designed for fitness tracking, and with smart devise such as smart watches we can track our physical activity with minimal effort throughout the day. If you do a lot of walking at your job or on the weekend, trying turning on your phones step counter, you may be surprised how many calories we burn just from keeping active and walking in our daily lives.
Clothing:
Whilst your appearance in the mirror may be a big motivator for getting fit, we need to set other goals to keep us motivated, as the process of changing your body may take longer than you thought. If looking thinner is your only goal and you don’t see results immediately, you may loose motivation quickly.
However, what you may not be aware of is that whilst it may not look like you’re losing any weight, if you’re properly tracking your diet and keeping your fitness levels high, it is very likely you’re losing weight every day. The changes to your body may be so small that you don’t see it immediately, however they are sure to be happening slowly over time.
A good way of tracking this unseen weight loss is through how your clothes fit. Have you notice that your jeans fit slightly looser, or maybe your shirt is a little tighter in the areas you’ve gained muscles. This is a good indicator of how your body is changing, and may help boost your confidence during the period where it seems like you’re not making any progress.
Some people like to have a piece of ‘goal’ clothing, such as a skirt or a pair of jeans. By picking something which at the beginning of your fitness journey you know is too small for you, and working towards fitting into it can be a real motivator for losing weight and keeping to your fitness goals.
Taking Measurements:
Sometimes your weight on the scale can be deceiving, depending on the time of day it can fluctuate, and if you’ve been gaining muscle from working out then it may appear that you’re gaining weight even if you have been burning fat. Whilst it’s important to keep tracking your weight in your journal or app, it is also important to measure yourself to keep track of the gradual changes.
Whilst daily measurement are unnecessary (you’re unlikely to lose weight day to day) you should record your neck, shoulders, waist, biceps, chest, thighs and hip sizes with a tape measure weekly. Remember to keep the time of day for your measurements the same each week, and the time of day can significantly change the results.
Blood Pressure Checks:
Fitness progress mean more than looking good in your clothes. No matter what your fitness goals are, losing weight or gaining muscles, your blood pressure can present you with the overall picture of your health. Heart health directly depends on blood pressure that is consequently influenced by physical activity, nutrition and stress levels.
With regular workouts, both your body and cardiovascular system will be stronger, which minimises the risks of heart and chronic disease risks. A blood pressure watch is a good solution for keeping ontop of your blood pressure indexes.
When seeing how healthy the rest of your body is becoming, you’re sure to stay motivated on your fitness journey.
Progression Photos:
Whilst this approach isn’t for everyone, some people like to take weekly photos after they’ve worked out so that they can keep track of how their body is changing. Because we are always looking at ourselves it is hard to notice when any change happens, however if you have a weekly log of how your body is changing you may be surprised at how much your body has evolved even after a few weeks.
Being fit is not always a synonym for a muscular and slim body shape. It is about health, well-being and fulfilment. Regular exercising and proper nutrition will bring you the body you desire, together with decreasing health hazards and improving your mental health. It just takes a little motivation to get going, but once you start and begin tracking your progress you’re sure to make see the results flying in.
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