How To Track Your Fitness Progress

There’s one important activity that separates those that succeed at something, from those that don’t.

Whether it’s people who have lost tremendous amounts of body fat, gained serious levels of muscle, developed high levels of athletic prowess, or built successful business and lifestyles for themselves… the specific goal doesn’t really matter.

No matter what they are pursuing there is one important thing that they all seem to do…

They write everything down.

I know that since you are reading TheJerd.com that you are smart, incredibly good looking and all-around awesome but I am going to assume that you’re also serious about making changes to your life to become even more awesomer (Shoosh! It’s my website, I can make that a word if I want to.)

If that’s the case then I truly cannot stress enough the importance of this! This doesn’t mean just watching the scale either, I’m talking about following and keeping track of a plan that helps keep you on the path to success! It’s not easy, but I am here to show you how to track fitness progress.

Let’s get started RIGHT NOW!

Track Everything… It’s Important!

Anyone who has ever played Dungeons & Dragons, World of Warcraft (or any other MMO), collected baseball cards or managed a fantasy sports league, knows the joys of keeping track of every facet of your character or team.

As geeks it is in our DNA!

Often, when it comes to the important stuff though, we just kind of wing it…

Tell me if this rings a bell.

1. You tell yourself you want to get in shape
2. For two weeks you go on occasional runs and try to eat less
3. You step on the scale every day and the numbers go up and down
4. After weeks of inconsistent progress you get dejected and fall off the wagon
5. Repeat ad nauseam

If I were a betting man I’d put my money on this being why 80% of people fail in their attempts to get in shape!

If you want to improve, you have to track fitness progress. End of discussion.

Tracking your methodologies and processes is vital, and here’s why:

• You don’t know how much you’re eating – If you’re over (or under) weight, I would be willing to guess that you probably don’t realize just how much you consume daily. As members of the “restaurant generation” we all have such a warped sense of reality when it comes to portion sizes and what a balanced meal really is.
• You can’t tell if you’re getting stronger – In order to get stronger our bodies need to constantly be challenged. While doing the same workout over and over and over might give you a small increase to your fitness, you’re just going to end up getting really good at those particular exercises. Want real results? Then you need to constantly change things up and increase the difficulty and if you don’t know what you did last time, how do you know if you’re improving?
• Scales lie – You might have heard this before, “muscle weighs more than fat.” Now that really isn’t true (a pound is a pound) but it is more dense, so a pound of muscle takes up a lot less room in your body. If you’re training the right way, eating right and doing some superheroic strength training (while avoiding getting “skinny fat”), your weight might not drop as fast as you want it to. Even though you’re reducing the amount of fat you’re carrying around, the scale might not be budging. If the scale was your only method of measuring progress there’s a good chance you’d get a little discouraged at the lack of perceived “progress.”
• Measure it, improve it! – Maybe it’s because I am stubborn, but I know when I have a goal to beat I definitely push myself to make it happen. If I know that last week I kept hitting 10 pullups like a wall, then the following week you can be damned sure I will have the number 11 emblazoned in my mind. Just that single-minded determination may very well be what I need to crack that barrier.

Hopefully I have convinced you that yes, you should be tracking your fitness progress. Are you ready?

Here’s how!

Track Your Workouts

Are you exercising with purpose?

Remember the 6th Law of the Jerd-Herd? The one that says “We train smarter not harder”? Of course you do (and if you didn’t that’s okay, that can be our little secret but make sure you brush up on all the rules now!)

We want to be as efficient as possible with our time, and the only way to truly have that kind of efficiency is to have a well thought out plan!

“I love it when a plan comes together” – Col. John “Hannibal” Smith, The A-Team

I certainly hope you aren’t one of those people who shows up to the gym and wanders around aimlessly, randomly grabbing whatever machine is free or looks fun to use. While you might feel like you are accomplishing something, there’s a good chance you are wasting a lot of time and effort.

If you’re serious about getting in shape, when it comes time to get in your workout, you need to know exactly what you’re going to do and for how long! How do we do this? By tracking our workouts.

Are you getting faster and stronger?

Sometimes it can be hard to tell, and you need to constantly challenge yourself if you want to improve.

• Shoulder press 70lbs last week? Then this week you need to be upping that weight to 75 pounds if you want to get stronger.
• Did 60 crunches last week? Then you need to be push through at least 61 this week.
• Run a 9 minute mile last week? Then you know you need to break into the 8 minute zone if you want to keep getting faster.

So not only should you have your goals and your workout plan already written down in your gym notebook (you have one of those… right?), you should be tracking what you are doing too. Keep track of the exercises you do, how many sets of how many reps, how much weight you are using, how long they take, etc…

I promise you, taking the two extra minutes to write it all down is going to pay huge dividends in the long run. Besides, do you think Batman would not meticulously track every aspect of his training? Of course he would!

When in doubt, be like Batman.

Track your Food

Awhile back I wrote an article extolling the virtues of food journaling, so I am not going to rehash it all… but here are a few key points.

I bet you aren’t aware of how many calories pass through your face-hole. Unless you’ve taken the time to actually count calories for a few days, you probably haven’t the slightest clue as to how many calories you really eat; so making any judgments about the success (or lack thereof) of your current fitness regimen is useless until you get a handle on it.

You can’t outrun your fork! I have a feeling I will be yelling this from the rooftops until the day I die… 75% of your weight loss is due to your diet, and while the quality of what you eat is incredibly important, how many calories you consume is the first thing that needs to be fixed.  Just because you did a killer workout doesn’t mean you can reward yourself with a box of donuts!

Be Consistent. Find a time where you can accurately write down your food choices for the day (and keep them in a central location, don’t be that guy who writes his entry on a different piece of paper every day). For many people, it is easier to enter one full day at a time; try making writing in your food journal an after dinner ritual. If it is too hard to remember everything you chowed down on for a full day, make your entries after each meal if you have to. The important thing is not to let more than one day go by without recording your entries, because then you are bound to omit things.

Write Down Everything You Eat. The most important key to success with food journaling is to list all foods you consume each day. Yes, that includes snacks and it most certainly includes beverages!

Every.single.calorie.

Without some level of detail the exercise loses a lot of value. Saying you had chicken, rice and broccoli is one thing, but saying you had a 6oz grilled chicken breast, 1 cup of diced broccoli and 1/2 cup of brown rice is another (I will let you decide which is more useful). The goal here is to just collect data that you can use to shape habits later. Tony Stark did not build the Iron Man armor in a day; there was definitely a lot of time spent researching, collecting data and writing plans out before he climbed into that glorious piece of machinery!

Look For Patterns. Periodically review your data and your overall eating habits. If things are not going the way you want them to look for things like – an over-abundance of liquid calories, poor overall meal composition (remember, a “good” meal is mostly lean protein, fresh veggies and a minimal amount of whole grains) or an inappropriate amount of calories.

It doesn’t have to be perfect, but tracking your food for just a few days (by hand or using a handy online tool like MyFitnessPal) could be a real eye opening experience; and remember, this is an iterative process so continually review and adjust as necessary!

Track your Body

I am going to make a profound statement here, so listen up.

Ready?

YOUR WEIGHT DOES NOT DEFINE YOU!

Two people of the same height and weight can be vastly different when it comes to how healthy they are and how they look and feel.

Eat right and exercising properly? Your body will do you a favor and shed fat while building that denser muscle tissue we discussed earlier.

Go on a “diet” (which we already know don’t work) and waste a ton of time on the treadmill? You might actually lose more weight but it will be both muscle and fat, leaving you “skinny fat” and looking Steve Rogers before he was turned into Captain America.

So while we aren’t going to throw the scale out the window, we are going to add another method or two to help us accurately track our body composition.

Take a picture – Personally, I think this is the way to go. It’s simple, it’s honest and it accurately portrays progress across the entirety of your body. All you need to do is stand in front of a mirror in a bathing suit or your underwear with your cell phone or digital camera and… well… take a picture! Then turn sideways and repeat for a profile shot.

Here’s the hard part about this relatively simple act. You have to look at it after you are done. You might not like what you see. It might anger or depress you. You may never want to see it again and there is a good chance you might feel a little anxiety at the thought of someone else seeing it.

THAT’S NORMAL!

Just take the pictures and put them somewhere only you can find them and then every week repeat the process. Here’s the thing about self-perception. We suck at it! Not only is it difficult to see ourselves as we really are, but because we see ourselves every day we can almost never perceive day-to-day changes as they are so incrementally small. Once you have a couple of months of weekly photos though you’ll be able to see how your body is really reacting to your fitness regimen.

Take measurements – If taking a photo makes you uncomfortable then the next best thing is taking some body measurements. Head to a fabric or craft store and buy a cheap tape measure, or just snag one online here. Then take measure the circumference of these spots and write it down:

• Neck (if you don’t have one of these I might need to refer you to a different website)
• Shoulders (both arms down at your side, at the widest point from shoulder to shoulder)
• Chest (lift your arms, wrap the tape measure around your chest, and then lower your arms)
• Bicep (both left and right)
• Waist (at the belly button for consistency)
• Hips (at the widest part of your hips)
• Thigh (both left and right)

If you are going to get any value out of this method you need to be consistent! Make sure your measurements are taken first thing in the morning (definitely not after your workout) and be sure to measure the same location each week. Find a mole, a freckle a tattoo, whatever… just be sure you are measuring the same spot!

Measure your body fat percentage – I almost didn’t list this option because it can be a pain in the butt to do properly (depending on your financial situation though, you can always have it professionally done I guess); but if you are dead set on making sure you are losing body fat this is a surefire method. Here’s my handy-dandy guide on how to do just that!

If you are seriously overweight, don’t waste your time with this. Seriously. Just take progress pictures and your measurements, and down the road after you’ve had some success then go ahead and give this a shot.

So to do this right you want to have your body fat tested professionally. This could mean going to a facility that uses hydro-static weighing, Dexa scanning or using a Bod Pod (you can find locations here.) If you don’t want to drop $50 a visit getting it professionally done then the next best thing is to purchase a body fat caliper and do it yourself.

Also, don’t waste your time with scales that have a body fat calculator function. They are trash!

Public Service Announcement Time!

Please, for the love of all that is holy, don’t obsessively track everything day-to-day.

Tracking fitness progress is important, but measuring EVERY day is not only unhealthy OCD behavior, but it will drive you nuts because you’re going to want to over-analyze every little change. Our bodies are incredibly complex, and all sorts of stuff happens throughout the day to affect it; everyone’s weight fluctuates several pounds over the course of a day. So pick one day/time a week to do your measurements, and make it consistent. I advise after you wake up and before you eat breakfast. Real change takes time, don’t obsess!

I know the focus has been on tracking fitness progress, as most of the articles here are, but in reality a systematic method of tracking progress and setting goals can be used to help with any endeavor – getting better at a physical skill, increasing the profitability of a business, or anything!

If you’re focusing on improving and you consistently track your progress to make sure you are heading in the right direction, you will get the results you’re after.

Also, one last thought. By constantly keeping track of what you eat, taking measurements, and tracking your workouts, you are always going to have “healthy” on the brain and that alone will help you make more consistent healthy life choices. Score!

So here is the TL;DR version for what took me over 2000 words to say:

• Have a plan
• Know what kind of results you need to improve
• Do it

So there you go. Any questions?

Do you track your fitness progress? Have you used your results to make adjustments? Let me know int he comments below!

And if you haven’t already done so, make sure you’re signed up to receive free email updates whenever I publish a new article (and get a cool free e-book)! Also check out our YouTube channel (if you want access to our Nerd-Core Fitness exercise videos), follow me on Twitter, and like us on Facebook and Google+ (there is content on both not available here on the site.)There are so many different ways for you to get your daily dose of Jerdly goodness so don’t miss out!

(Photo #1 credit, Photo #2 credit, Photo #3 credit, Photo #4 credit, Photo #5 credit)

PS: Make sure to get your free e-book, “The 7 Fitness Obstacles Newbies Face” by subscribing to our newsletter… no spam, I promise!