In this guide, you’ll learn everything you need to know about how to properly track your fitness and weight loss progress. We’re going to take a very specific approach to track our body weight.
The biggest mistake many people make focusing solely on their body weight alone to dictate progress. I need you to understand that we are absolutely not going to get wrapped up in the number you see on the scale. That’s a guaranteed way to stress out and feel like an emotional wreck. This is not a quick sprint. This is a marathon.
Don’t focus on dropping as much weight as fast as possible.
This is a problem for two reasons:
1. Your bodyweight can fluctuate 1%-2% DAILY and weekly due to bowel movement, water intake, sodium intake, hormonal fluctuations, stress, etc. So don’t freak out if your weight goes from 198 to 201 the next day if you know you’ve been eating in a calorie deficit. You did not gain 3lbs of fat overnight.
Because of this, what you weigh on any specific day isn’t a great way to analyze progress.
You solve this by looking at your average weight changes over the course of weeks and months. (more on this soon)
2. Your bodyweight is just one of many methods to track your rate of progress.
If you’re basing your progress solely on the number you see on the scale, you’re not doing yourself a favor.
Focus on the daily actions that’ll lead to long-term sustainable success. If you’re ACTUALLY making the right decisions and following the steps I’ve outlined in this guide for tracking your progress, you’ll have a better indication of whether you’re progressing or not. We are going to be very specific with how we measure our progress. We’ll be using a combination of a bodyweight scale, body fat percentage, along with a body tape measurer.
Losing bodyweight is a sign of progress, but it’s not the end all be all. There are other ways to track progress (measurements, pictures, how clothes fit, workout performance, etc.) that matters just as much, if not more than the number on the scale.
My client Tisha is a perfect example of how you can make fat loss progress without huge weight drops on the scale:
This is about one month of online coaching progress between these before & after photos.
Between these photos, Tisha is down 6 inches from her waist and only an 8 pound drop on the scale.
She stayed consistent and her weight dropped more as she got leaner, but these photos are a great example of how the scale isn’t the end all be all.
It’s obvious that Tisha has lost a lot of fat, but she’s built some muscle too. (which adds weight to her frame as muscle has weight)
In the next section, we’ll cover the 3 main ways for tracking your rate of progress to ensure you’re moving in the right direction.