How To Track And Assess Your Fitness Progress

Tracking your progress is an important part of staying on track with your fitness goals. Keeping a food log, workout log, taking “before and after” photos, recording body weight, body fat, circumference measurements, and personal records (PR’s) are all great ways to keep you on track and moving in the right direction.
When first starting a program, you may not see much movement on the scale. Do not get discouraged. It is likely that you are gaining a little muscle and shedding a little body fat. This is the initial phase we all go through when our bodies are adapting to new stimuli. Stick with it.
When tracking body weight, weighing yourself every single day can sometimes do more harm than good. Your body weight fluctuates daily and at different times based on things like fluid, sodium consumption, and undigested food. Minor daily fluctuations on the scale can be discouraging to a person’s weight loss efforts. Instead, weigh yourself once a week in the morning on an empty stomach, wearing minimal or no clothing, using the same scale. Different scales will skew your readings so the scale needs to stay consistent.
Also, the scale is just one tool for measuring progress. Remember, the scale only measures WEIGHT loss. Take body fat readings each week of the month to measure FAT loss. There is a big difference between these two. Look at it like this. Hypothetically, two twin brothers agree to participate in a 6-week research study designed to assess how different combinations of macronutrients (carbs, protein, and fat) affect body composition. Both twins are put on a 2,000 calorie per day diet, and both adhere to the same workout program. Assuming all things are constant like body weight when starting, and the amount of weight used in the workout program, twin “A” consumes 2,000 calories of Oreo Cookies each day, twin “B” consumes 2,000 calories of lean meats, vegetables and fruits, nuts and seeds, and a fairly low amount of starches and sugars. Assuming twin “A” hasn’t had any health complications after 6 weeks (which would be a miracle), their body WEIGHT may be around the same range but who do you think will come out with a lower body FAT percentage? How about just overall better health? The answer to that is obvious.