You think its time for a change. You don’t like how things are right now and want something to be different. You want to lose weight, get thinner, look more toned. Something that makes you believe looks better than where you are now. When people make this goal, they always focus on weight. We attribute growth with numbers and weight is the biggest, in your face number, we share with others. However, weight varies over time, depending on what you ate and different physical makeup between person to person. Weight is still a good indicator of progress, but shouldn’t be the only thing you focus on when determining your progress.
1. Measurements
When you start losing weight and exercising more, your body physique will change over time. Two different people can have the same body weight but have different fat to muscle ratio. When you take a pound of fat and a pound of muscle, you will see that there is a lot more fat compared to muscle. This is because muscle is denser than fat. So when you lose that fat, and gain muscle, you will be getting leaner and could still be the same weight. To help determine your progress, you should measure around your waist, thighs, stomach, chest, etc, to see how much those areas have shrunk. Your waist and hips goes down 3 inches is something that doesn’t get noticed as much because we are all focused on the weight.
2. How clothes fit
Losing weight/fat again causes your body to get leaner and smaller. On the other hand, your clothes stay the same size. I always love it when you see pictures of people wearing the clothes they wore before they started their fitness journey. To how big those clothes look on that person is incredible and it shows how much they worked to get to where they are now. When you go from an X-Large shirt to a Medium shirt it tells you how far you’ve come. In fact, people can have different sizes even though they weigh the same. It’s all about the body index.
3. Workout progress
How much you lift or how fast you go doesn’t get asked as much as how much weight you’ve lost. If you went from a 10:00 mile to a 7:00 mile, then you know you have made great progress towards a healthier lifestyle. To see you are lifting more weight shows that you are progressively getting stronger. The stronger, faster, and fitter you get the easier daily tasks will become. The point of losing weight/fat should be to have a healthier lifestyle and to be able to do things without struggle, and hopefully better than before.
