? Is the numbers on your scales important to you?
? Is it how well you fit into your clothes?
? How many push-ups you can do?
Everyone has a different way they like to measure their progress. I use all of the above for my clients and a few other tests because it gives a wider sense of achievement rather than just focusing on one thing.
Personally, I don’t really like scales. There are a lot of factors that come into play with these such as time of day, how much water you’ve had, when you last ate, even the location of the scales can make a difference.
If you are going to use scales, make sure you have scales that at a minimum measure body fat % as well as weight. As an extra seeing muscle mass is good as well – you want your body fat to go down and your muscle mass to go up – which will be a much more satisfying feeling than just seeing a number on the scales which really doesn’t show you anything.
Lean muscle tissue will help shape your body in a far sexier way than just dropping body fat so this is a great way to see your progress.
Fitting into your clothes is an excellent test; in fact I would say it’s my favorite. When clients are losing weight they often don’t see results themselves and it’s not until someone gives them a compliment that they realize they have been making progress all along.
When I ask them about how their shirt or pants are feeling – the ones they wear every day to work – they actually notice – ‘oh yeah, my shirt has been feeling a bit big come to think of it’ or ‘good point, I had to do my belt up an extra notch.’
So without even looking at numbers they could tell their body shape was changing, for the better this time!
And finally, the fitness tests. Also another favorite of mine because these numbers show a lot of things:
- Dedication
- Commitment
- Sacrifice
- Courage
All of the above are proof that they taking it seriously, so when something like a push-up test is done and they increase their numbers by whatever number, it shows me that for the past month they were dedicated to their goals, they were committed to their outcome, they made sacrifices to stay on track and they had the courage to take control of their circumstances to keep sight of what they wanted to achieve.
So what’s going to be your way of testing and measuring your progress?