Hey girl,
So you’ve been trying to get these results and just been struggling to see any progress. I get it, I feel you! You’ve tried every program, diet, diet pill, surgery whatever your story maybe, I’ve been there.
There is no magic pill or formula to zap you into your body of your dreams and suddenly love who you are, it doesn’t work like that.
You can 100% have the body you choose and love who you are; at the same time, BUT it’s going to take work on your end.
To change your body, you first have to change your mindset and relationship with yourself. This takes time, patience, perseverance and focus.
You may be thinking Hannah what this has to do with tracking my progress or wanting to know how to track my progress. Well, my friend, everything, tracking your progress is going to require you to have a goal a SMART goal and then a plan to reach that goal. It’s not as easy as 1-2-3 if it were everyone would do it. You need to be solid with who you are, and if not, then you have to build that relationship solid along the way.
So let’s begin….
It’s funny when we think of tracking progress it’s like that’s more for the bodybuilders or performance athletes. But tracking progress is vital for anyone wanting to transform their inner health and physique and relationship with themselves.
If you want to have sustainable, lasting results, you need to be tracking your progress, and there are many ways to do this depending on your goal.
I have four key areas I make sure I am tracking as all four work together, and if one is not applied, it will cause an imbalance in all.
Before you can even track your progress, you need first to have a goal, and in my video, I talk about setting SMART goals.
Once you have your goal, you can build a plan and track your progress to make sure you headed in the right direction.
In the Fit Club, I have created a Progress tracking journal for the FC babes to track their progress in the gym and their relationship with themselves, like a self check in.
I’ll break each one down for you.
1. Tracking your performance, strength and or endurance.
Fit test: A fit test, no matter your goal, is essential as everyone should be trying to improve their strength, whether that be muscular strength, muscular hypertrophy or muscular endurance.
A fit test is going to show any imbalances as well as strengths, so it will give you a guide based on your goal where you need to improve.
Tracking your fitness goals: Once you have completed your fittest, it will indicate your strengths and weaknesses and help you decide on a program that fits you and your goal. In my Fit club, I have many programs that you can choose from. From there, you will bring a workout log with you to your workouts and record your work sets, reps, time or distance; this will help you challenge yourself each workout, keeping you working towards your goal. For some exercises, you may have to work on your form before adding any progressive overload options.
Tracking your workouts is one of the easiest ways to keep yourself focused because each exercise is rewarding to see progress in some areas.
2 . Tracking your body composition
Your body will naturally start to change when you stayed focused on your efforts in the gym and in the kitchen, which we will talk about nutrition in a bit. I know this is the area we want to happen right away, but it doesn’t work like that. It takes focus, patients & consistency in all four areas I’m going to share.
Let’s talk about the ways you can track your body composition.
Weight on the scale: now, this seems to be what most women gravitate to but is not the best progress tracker. If you are trying to lose weight, then it helps, but if you lose fat and put on muscle, the scale may not move at all, but your body composition changes. This is way better than the scale going down.
I always say to my FC babes weight loss can come from taking a poop to cutting off a limb lol seriously. I’m assuming there are many ways the scale can go down, but it does not always mean good & healthy progress. I recommend only weighing yourself 1x week most.
As long as you are not just going by what the scale says and are taking other tracking methods into consideration, then that’s fine.
Measurements: measurements are a great way to track progress in the sense that if your inches go down in your waist, then that’s a good sign you are losing fat. It’s always great if you’re trying to pus muscle on as taking your measurements in the areas you want to see growth.
Now the only thing with measurements is you could replace fat with muscle let’s say in your legs, so there are now toned and defined instead of jiggling and soft ( and there’s nothing wrong with that.) But now you haven’t lost many inches, but you are tighter and leaner. So that’s why it’s important to have a few tracking methods, if not all, of them depending on your goal.
Pictures are a great way to see changes in your body as the weight on the scale may not go down, but your photos look way different. Progress pictures should be one of the most important, along with the fittest. Again you have to be consistent with taking them weekly no matter what.
Fat loss with Callipers: this measures your fat mass to lean body mass. This is another great way to measure if you are building muscle and losing fat.
All of these tracking tools can be done every month; the only ones I would recommend weekly are the progress pictures.
3 . Tracking your food
Whatever your goal is fat loss, putting muscle on, or simply having more energy. Tracking your food is a great way to reach your goals and maintain that goal. Now tracking your food does not mean you count calories all day long.
This means you track your food, whether that be macros on my fitness pal, food journal or following a meal plan based on your goals. This is great for many reasons as tracking your macros, journaling or following a meal plan will help you reach your goals and help you see if you need to increase based on your energy levels or food sensitives.
4 . Daily self-check ins
This is something that is so important and I have added it to our Fit Club progress tracker. You should check in with yourself daily even if it’s just rating on a scale of 1-5 how you’re doing, how you slept, and how your workouts are going. Also tracking your daily non-exercise activity as well, steeping step goals is a great way.
I also do a daily brain dump I get everything out of my head onto paper, which declutters my mind. I then write a gratitude list, just 1-3 things you are grateful for, I also write out a few I AM positive statements.
I promise if you follow these steps I’ve outlined, you will have more clarity and feel more focused on what’s serving you and what’s not.
I hope by sharing this, it will give you the tools to start reaching your goals.
I also would love to hear from you when you do, about how it helped you.
xoxo
Your transformation coach,
Hannah