When it comes to fitness goals, it’s pretty simple: If you’re not tracking it, you can’t improve it.
If your goal is to lose weight, how do you know if your actions are adding up to achieving your goal if you’re not tracking your meals?
If your goal is to get stronger, how do you know if the exercises you’re doing are going to get you there if you’re not logging your sets, reps and weights?
In some cases, we can use technology to help us with this (such as My Fitness Pal or another meal-tracking app). Other times, good old-fashioned pencil and paper is best.
Here are some of the key metrics I encourage my clients to track, because they’ve been proven to be the simplest and most effective:
Water: Did you drink at least half your bodyweight in ounces of water?
Sleep: Did you sleep at least 7 hours?
Compliant Meals: Counting calories and macros can be tedious and tends to take all the enjoyment out of your meals. Simply ask yourself each day if you had at least 2 compliant meals. What’s a compliant meal? For men, it’s 2 palm-sized servings of protein, 2 fist-sized servings of veggies, 2 cupped handfuls of smart carbs and 2 thumb-sized portions of healthy fats. For women, it’s 1 of each.
Exercise: Did you move for at least 20 minutes? Simply tracking your daily activity is a great start. Once you get into a more structured strength training routine, you can begin recording your heaviest sets in the foundational exercises (like squats, deadlifts and bench press) so you can measure your progress.
Body Composition: I don’t recommend weighing yourself every day, especially if weight loss is your goal. The daily fluctuations (of up to 10lbs) will drive you nuts! But I do recommend recording your weight, waist and hip measurements monthly. Even better, take monthly progress photos from a front and side angle. What only shows up as 5 pounds on the scale may look like 10 because of the redistribution of lean mass and fat on your body.
You don’t have to start tracking everything right away. Start with the one you believe will be the easiest for you to track and start tracking it today. Once you build some confidence and momentum, add some more metrics to your tracking.
One unexpected benefit: You’ll be surprised how much better your health and fitness decisions will become simply by tracking your behavior. A little accountability will go a long way.
Sound like a lot of work or need more accountability? Let me do most of the work to help keep you on track to your fitness goals. Just reply ‘accountability’ to start your journey to a new heathier you today.
Your friend and coach,
Paul F Sweatt CPT
Train Smart. Train Hard. Train Safe. Train to Sweatt.