Happy New Year!
Have you read my latest post on the Facebook group? It’s about approaching your health and fitness goals in an approachable way – come along and take a look.
As you move towards your fitness goals this year, you’re going to want to assess how you’re doing – and I have some ideas which I think will be better than relying on just the scales and the mirror.
For today, let’s look at why the scales and mirror aren’t the best ways to gauge your progress, and next week I will explain the better ways you can assess how things are going.
Those of you who have relied on the scales will know that a daily weigh in doesn’t make it easy for you to assess your progress. Your weight fluctuates daily for so many reasons beyond whether you’ve lost body fat or not. If you do want to weigh yourself, once a week is plenty often enough – but even then, there’s no need to change course until you’ve seen the scales staying still, or heading in the wrong direction, for a good couple of weeks.
Likewise, it’s worth remembering that the scales are telling you your total weight, and not the weight of your muscle and fat separately (i.e. your body composition). And so, you don’t know whether you’ve lost weight because you’ve lost body fat, or because you’ve lost muscle – and there is a huge difference. In fact, if you’ve lost weight from muscle, you could actually be getting fatter – because the percentage of your body which is fat would be increasing.
While I do think that taking a look in the mirror, or using a pair of “slightly too tight” trousers can be helpful ways to monitor whether your body is changing, you do need to approach these things with caution too.
A great way to explain this point is to think about a photo you have of yourself from a good few years ago. What do you think about yourself in that picture when you look at it now? I’d bet you think you look nothing like as bad as you thought, and that you’d love to look like that again. Now consider whether it’s possible that the same thing could be happening again – might you look back at how you look now and have a different view point?
The point is that we are always inclined to notice our flaws, and so using the mirror as a way to gauge your progress should be used carefully.
Ultimately, the bottom line is that if you want to live this fit and healthy lifestyle forever, then you’re going to need to move away from the scales and mirror, and instead learn to notice the wider more health type benefits.
In fact, these are the things I’d urge you to measure your progress by right from the outset – they’ll give you a more accurate picture of how things are doing – and, by getting these things right, you can’t help but reach looks based goes along the way.
Do you have any ideas what these better metrics might be?