How To Track Your Progress Without Stepping on the Scales
Health

How To Track Your Progress Without Stepping on the Scales

clock-circular-outlinePosted 3 Apr 2019

When embarking on your fitness journey, keeping track of your progress is an important way to stay motivated and prevent yourself from hitting that dreaded plateau. The most obvious way to track your fitness progress is weighing yourself. However, health and fitness is about a lot more than weight loss or gain, and there are other factors you should consider. 

Han from Wellness and Wander shares her top tips for tracking your progress without having to step on the scales.

Take it away, Han.

Tracking your fitness journey or progress when training is an effective way to review how you are doing and if you need to make any changes. Jumping on the scales every morning is one way to track your progress. However, it isn’t a method you should rely on completely. 

Did you know many different factors can affect your bodyweight that has nothing to do with your fat percentage? Changes in your weight could come down to other factors including an increase in your muscle mass and water loss or retention. 

Increased muscle mass

It’s a common misconception that muscle weighs more than fat, but in reality, a pound of muscle weighs the same as a pound of fat. The difference is that the volume of muscle is denser, and as a result, is heavier. So, if you are working hard and building a lot of dense muscle mass, your weight on the scale may increase as a result. 

Water loss and retention 

After an intense workout such as a spin or HIIT class, stepping on the scale could show a lower weight due to the water lost from sweating. If the scale is showing a higher weight, you could be retaining water which happens when the plasma in your bloodstream stores an extra 2-4 pounds of water to make sure you don’t get dehydrated. 

You can combat this from happening by making sure you are drinking enough.

The scales seem to determine if we are succeeding or failing. However, it isn’t an accurate method to track progress as there are so many factors which can change that number, as per the examples above. 

If standing on the scales is affecting you in a negative way, it is time to find another way to track which works for you. Using scales can give unrealistic expectations resulting in disappointment and negative feelings towards yourself.

So, what other ways can you track your fitness progress?

Body measurements 

Grab a tape measure and take measurements once a week in the same places on your body. That can include upper arms, waist, hips, thighs, and calves. Wherever you want to track, measure and write it down at regular intervals.

Fitness milestones 

As you train more, you will start to see you can lift heavier or run further. It is important to progress slowly and safely to avoid injury, but sometimes you can forget how far you have come if you don’t record your milestones. If you are beginning to run, record your distances and times. If you strength train, record your reps and weights.

How you feel 

Living a healthy lifestyle has many more benefits to it than just losing weight. 

You sleep better, you have more energy, you can do more, and you may generally feel better about yourself. Noting how you are feeling can be useful to see your progress as these little changes can often be forgotten about when you're focusing solely on aesthetics.

Take photos 

This one isn’t for everyone, but being able to see the physical changes can be a huge motivation for some people. 

Yes, standing in your underwear in front of a camera is daunting, but a month later you can take another set and compare the changes you’ve made. Comparing photos which have been taken with more time apart can show long term progress that you might not notice when looking in the mirror ever day.

Chasing a ‘goal weight’ on the scales can seem like a cat and mouse game, with every day giving you a different measurement. 

Don’t give up if the scale isn’t giving you the results you’d hoped for, find another way to track your progress!

You can read more from Han here

How do you track your progress?

Let us know in the comments down below.

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