📊How to Accurately Track Your Health Progress 🏋🏼💪❤️
The scale is not your friend. There are many factors that affect how much you weigh. If you want to get an accurate picture of your progression, you need to measure your body and take pictures of yourself so you can compare them to know if what you are doing is working or not.
When you are working on improving your physical health, you need to be specific about the outcome you are trying to achieve so you know what to focus on. Most people say, “I need to lose weight.” But why do they say that? Who cares how much you weigh if you look and feel good? When we say we want to “lose weight,” what we really mean is “lose body fat.”
Muscles weigh more than fat, so judging your health by weight doesn’t tell the whole story.
If you eat a lot of sodium, you could retain water, which can affect how much you weigh, and if you don’t like the number you see on the scale, you may get discouraged and not want to continue. This is why you should only use a scale occasionally—if ever—to get a baseline. Don’t weigh yourself often if you want to accurately track your progress. When you do, make sure to weigh yourself at the same time of day and with the same clothes on to get an accurate weight. I would recommend weighing yourself no more than once a month.
The body mass index or BMI is a horrible way of tracking health, and doctors should stop using it. We are all different shapes and sizes and don’t fit neatly into indexes. If someone is short and ripped, they may have a poor BMI, but in reality, they are in good health. They just don’t “fit” within the index.
There are only three choices when it comes to your health goal: lose body fat (cut), gain lean muscle (bulk), or maintain.
Most of us want to lose fat, and that’s great, but the key to health is to also gain lean muscle. The more muscle you have the more calories your body burns at rest and during physical activity. The more lean muscle you have the stronger you will be. Being strong is great for all kinds of things, but it will also make you less likely to injure yourself during everyday tasks and boost your metabolism, giving you more energy and drive to do the things you want to do.
There are a few ways to track your progress more accurately than using a scale. You can measure several areas of your body to see if they grow or shrink. Take pictures of yourself with minimal clothing on and compare them to see how your body is changing or not.
If you have access to a DEXA scan, it can tell you a lot about your body. It’s a type of X-ray that can tell you your body fat percentage, how much muscle mass you have, and your bone health.
I recommend you track the metrics that will clearly tell you if you are making progress, like taking pictures, taking body measurements, and weighing yourself, before you start working on improving your health and then repeat this routine once a month to track your progress and change things up if they are not working for you. Weight is not the best measurement of health, but it can tell you if you are going in the right direction toward your goals.
Take this process of gaining control of your health slowly and steadily. It’s recommended to lose one to two pounds a week for healthy weight management. Remember, we all have different bodies, and what works for one may not be right for all, so find what works for you and do what’s best for your body.
Start tracking the metrics that matter:
Use my Health Tracker Input Form to record your health baseline.
Click HERE to download the Health Tracker Input Form
- Starting on the left side of the form, fill in today’s date, and then fill in your measurements under today’s date.
- Weight – Make sure to weigh yourself at the same time of day and wear the same clothes to get an accurate measurement for comparison.
- Body Fat – If your scale measures body fat percentage, this will be a helpful measurement to track, but most scales are not very accurate, so use this as a guide, not a finite number.
- Use a tripod or ask a good friend to take pictures of you so you can see how your body is changing.
- Wear minimal clothing so you can see your body. Underwear or swimwear is ideal.
- This may be hard, but you need to face reality, and you will be happy you did when you compare the before and after pictures.
- Body measurements – Use the image at the bottom of the Health Tracker Input Form as a reference and a soft measuring tape to measure and log a few key body parts so you can see how your hard work is changing your body.
- Log the results in the “Health Tracker Log” also at the back of this workbook.
- Repeat this process once a month so you can compare your results.
- If you’re not progressing, consider what you could change to have the most impact.
Health Tracker Log
Once you have filled in the health tracker input form, you can transfer the data to the Health Tracker Log so you can keep this data safe for future comparison.