Progress
When embarking on a weight loss (or even a weight gain) journey, the first thing we do is step on the scale, right? Now, there’s nothing wrong with that, but too often we ONLY use the scale as our gauge to check progress. While this isn’t a bad thing, it can sometimes become detrimental to your mental health as well as stall your progress.
Sure, I ask all my weight loss and bodybuilding clients to send me their scale weight every week because as a seasoned professional, I can tell a lot just by those weekly reports. But it certainly isn’t the only thing I look at, in fact it’s the last thing I look at when I’m assessing someone’s progress. Here are my six reports for progress:
Mental/Emotional: How are you feeling? Are you positive about the program (nutrition and exercise) or feeling defeated, sad, down…
All these factors can affect your progress. Negative metal and emotional states can cause increased cortisol which leads to water and fat retention due to the fight or flight response.
Clothes: specifically, jeans or dress pants. Are they getting looser every week?
Often the scale will not move for days, or even weeks. I know my client is in a deficit and following the plan but nothing’s moving the needle… so I ask them to put on their skinny jeans and tell me how they feel. When they easily pull them over their hips and button them without sucking in, that means they’ve lost fat – a lot of fat. Their body is going through the recomp phase where muscle and water are replacing fat at a 1:1 ratio, which means they are losing fat!
Mirror; What changes in the mirror do you see?
When you take off (most) your clothes and look in the mirror, you can’t help but really scrutinize yourself. Twisting your body to see the back, butt, side leg, shoulder striations, triceps and biceps, all of it. The mirror doesn’t lie; you’ll see every change no matter how small they are. Motivation!
Reactions: What are the people in your life seeing and saying?
Your coworkers, friends, family that you haven’t seen in a while, they’ll let you know when they see changes! Everyone loves to comment, “Wow, you’ve lost weight!” or, “You look great!” They won’t say it if they don’t see it. You won’t see it because you look at yourself every day, but they will.
Body fat measurement: If you have access – which all my clients do since I do caliper testing frequently.
There are quite a few ways to test body fat levels; calipers, bioimpedance, air displacement (bod-pod), dexa-scans, girth measurements, and underwater weighing. None are perfect, but if you use the same form each time, you’ll at least see the trend of going up, down, or staying the same.
Scale: up, down, stagnant
As the last check, the scale can give a good gauge of your plan working or not…
The scale doesn’t have to be scary, though. When I’m getting ready to compete, I get on the scale every day – at the same time and under the same conditions (wake up, use the bathroom, jump on the scale). That way I see if the number goes up, I can assess what I did the day before – more salt, less sleep, hard workout, added cardio, or even stress levels can cause an increase in weight. If the scale goes down, how much did it go down, then I go over the same questions and assess if I need to do anything different that day. The main thing is to take the average of the week to get a true measurement of loss, gain, or staying the same.
Remember, all these reports are tools in the toolbox to success. The more tools you have, the more success you will achieve.