Tracking Your Results – The Right Way

By M. Neophytou March 7, 2019

Keeping track of your results can make or break your fat loss, so it is crucial to have guidelines in place to track correctly.  Most of us don’t have access to a DXA scan but that won’t stop us from tracking results.

Don’t be the guy (or girl) who goes to the gym and hops on the scale at 4 in the afternoon! That number means nothing. Let’s think about this: so far in the day you ate 3 times, consumed beverages all day, and you have your pants on with your phone in the pocket.

Let it be known that this is all while the scale at the gym is old as dirt and had 45 people hop on it already today! This is not going to give you an accurate reading and will leave you feeling frustrated and hopeless.

Using a scale can be an accurate measure if you cut out as many variables as possible:

• Weigh yourself in the morning.
  • This can’t be stressed enough. One bottle of water weighs a pound.  A gallon weighs 8 pounds. Weigh yourself in the morning, after using the restroom but before consuming any food or beverages to get the most accurate reading.
• Do it Naked
  • Either wear the same garments every time you weigh yourself or don’t wear any.
• Do it Daily
  • Your weight will increase some days and decrease others.  This is fine as long as it is trending downwards. If you weigh yourself once per week, you are looking for failure.  That one day might be the only day that week you didn’t doodoo in the morning. Or, might be the day you has the most sodium the day before, which would inflate the number.
• Record your weights
  • Keep a record so you can compare it to next week.  You’ll need to take an average before the numbers mean anything.
• Compare
  • Take the average of this week and compare it to last week.  If last week’s average was 162 and this week is 160, you know you are on the right track.  If your weight is increasing, it’s time to look into options of increasing your caloric deficit.

Reading your results: Here is an actual example of a weight log sent in by a client.  Take a second to look at the results and think about what it tells you.

In the first column, her lowest weight was 144.6 lbs.  In the second column, her highest weight was 146.4 lbs.  If she were to weigh herself only once per week, she would cancel her meal plan and tell people she was not losing weight.   If we take averages, we see the results.

She lost 1.73 pounds over the course of the week!  Her average weight went from 146.2 lbs to 144.5 lbs. This means that at this rate, a ten pound weight loss journey would take less than 6 weeks and a 20 pound journey would take just over 11 weeks.

Key takeaways:   Weigh yourself in the morning after using the restroom and before consuming anything. Do it naked and record it daily.  Compare week averages to uncover whether you are on the right track. Of course, weighing yourself isn’t the only measure you can take to record progress.  You can also take measurements, pictures, or videos. Having a reference point of where you started will remind you how far you have come and will keep you motivated to keep moving and to love yourself even more.

Stay educated, stay dedicated.