Ways to Track Your Fitness and Weight-Loss Progress—Without Stepping on the Scales

You don't have to live or die by the numbers.

Nobody enjoys standing on the scales. Not only because of how insanely frustrating it can be (removing every piece of jewellery and checking again, to see if that extra pound suddenly disappeared). But the scales doesn’t actually, believe it or not, tell you much about how your progress.

Here’s some alternative indicators that are much less exasperating and certainly less disheartening ways to measure your progress.

1. Measurements

The single biggest frustration with the scales is that muscle weighs more than fat. It’s as simple as that, if you’ve added a weight training routine to your workouts, you might find yourself heavier on the scales. If this is your only measure of progress it can be really off-putting. This is because if we were to measure fat and muscle pound per pound, muscle covers less space than fat, but in fact weighs nearly 3 times heavier. This is why tracking your body measurements is a more accurate approach in calculating your success. In place of exasperation at your weekly weigh-ins, you can reward yourself for putting on muscle. So instead, whip out the measurement tape as a replacement every week or month to check your progress more realistically.

2. Take Photos

Many experts and trainers will encourage you to write down your progress in the form of your training, meals and measurements. But if you’re anything like me, and find yourself writing only the things you feel you should. Little white lies to make you feel better about your efforts.

How I avoid this is by taking pictures, a photo never lies. So why not snap some photos of your meals every day. Paying attention to the food you are eating, and how you feel after each meal, will help you improve your attitude towards food.

Also don’t be afraid to shoot some photos of yourself. It can be hard to see results in your body simply because it happens gradually and you see yourself every single day. Taking some before and after photos, and these can be for just your eyes only, will actually show you much clearer the progress you’ve made.

3. Track Your Workouts

Implement a regular workout routine—and when you’ve a consistant programme in place, track each session. Work to constantly improve, getting stronger, faster and fitter.

By following your workouts you’ll notice your results instantly. You can always do this old school with a notepad and pen. I love using my Fitbit app. I purchased my Fitbit Versa Lite in December and honestly I don’t know what I did before it. Fitbit allows you to see your heartrate during each workout, and what I love most is its ability to track my runs. Each day I try to improve myself, whether it’s running further, trying a tougher route, or simply trying to bring down my top performing split time or my average split times.

Fitbit also awards badges for certain amounts of miles, steps etc. which can be a great motivator too. I get weekly emails on my fitness progress, which is compared to the week previous and labelled clearly what is up/down or the same.

4. Download a Sleep App

All of this is great, but can you seriously expect yourself to eat well all of the time or even allow your body to recover from your workouts, if you don’t have a good sleep routine?

Sleep is critical to your health. A good night’s sleep can limit food cravings on a daily basis and in the long run help our bodies fight against aging, while reducing the risk of heart disease and can even impact our minds to combat depression. This is why, it’s important to keep tabs on how many hours of sleep you get a night, not only this but the quality of that sleep too.

There’s many trackers out there that can provide us with this information daily. Once again, Fitbit’s advanced tools are perfect for this, automatically tracking your time in light, deep and REM stages of sleep by using your sleeping heart rate and movement. The app then provides you with a sleep score every night.

5. Write It All Down

Everybody needs some “Me time”. Finding the right balance is essential in improving our stress levels, health and fitness. Every day, try to write down some of the things that made you feel good. By acknowledging the ways you can influence how you feel every day, it becomes easier to make the right decisions to balance your health, wellness, and sanity, ensuring each is in sync.

Writing down your goals each day will facilitate their accomplishments. Set some healthy goals in the morning which you can accomplish over the next few hours. You don’t need to climb mountains either, you could eat an extra serving of fruit or vegetables. My Fitbit once again allows me to set some daily goals, personally I try to walk 10,000 steps every single day. I strive to hit 30 minutes of activity every day and walk more the 250 steps every hour consecutively for 7 hours. The watch even gives a slight vibration coming up to the hour if you have some steps yet to hit, which is a great reminder to get moving.

At the end of the day, go back to those goals and cross off the ones you’ve accomplished. With Fitbit the goals I’ve set come full circle when achieved and confetti splatters across the screen if you’ve completed all of your daily goals. This is a great motivator to work on your health and fitness.

6. Test Some Workouts

Every so often challenge yourself. Run a mile for a time, do a set of pushups, crunches and see how many you can get or try you max weight in the gym for one rep and see how you can build this up over time. And of course track this data. Improvement is key here! Set yourself a time-frame, and check again every month/ 6 months/ year. It’s completely up to you.