Follow These Tips to Reach Your Fitness Goals

You have decided to bring the body into shape and regular workouts have become your usual routine. Still, after one or two weeks of such physical activity, you don’t see wishful results in the mirror and stepping on the scale just confirms it. For that reason, you give up, abandon set goals and return to a sports lifestyle only when a certain time passes. It is high time to break this vicious circle!

The most crucial thing here is to understand that changes are not a matter of one week. It takes time to achieve progress, so you should gain patience and keep motivated along the way. The best solution for following fitness goals is results-tracking.

Body alterations and how you feel constantly performing physical activities are the greatest motivators for moving ahead.

By tracking your fitness, the possibility of reaching goals significantly rises and promotes you working and spending your time yet more efficiently. That way, our key task is to identify what ways of fitness progress measuring are the most fruitful and worth incorporating into the sports agenda. Let’s figure it out!

1. Keeping a Workout Journal 

Tracking your fitness results may be easy as a pie with steady journal keeping. Noting your exercising and meals is not time-consuming, but it will certainly give a clear vision of the advance. Do it the most convenient for you. It can be a usual notebook, notes on your device, or even Excel spreadsheets - it is up to you.

The essential is to be precise with writing down workouts. Try to include what exercises you did with the sets and reps number. If your workouts were of strength type, fix the used weight. In case you did running, record miles and performance time.

No less important is the well-being after physical activity. So, point out how you feel after the workout: exhausted or energized, whether it was harsh or easy.

The journal is also perfect for diet tracking. Exercising is requisite, but it loses its sense without proper nutrition. Thus, you will succeed only by blending these two components.

Still, you have to be careful since tracking your daily ratio may turn into obsessive calorie counting. To avoid this, we recommend just analyzing your eating habits and based on them, excluding or including specific products in your meals.

2. Fitness Trackers or Apps

Living in the modern world, we may benefit from various tech novelties, and it also relates to the fitness area. Track your results just in a few moments with smart fitness trackers or apps on your phone. 

If you still count your steps and manually monitor your heart rate - stop doing this. Currently, such measurements are effortless with the fitness tracker. Select your best fitting application and your workout progress control will become a sheer pleasure. 

So, fitness tracker usage is vital as, besides providing info about physical achievements, it helps take care of your health and become the best version of yourself. 

3. Clothes Fitting

As practice shows, an appealing mirror look can be the highest motivation. The best way to get a dose of inspiration is by trying clothes on.

For example, find a pair of jeans you have strived for so long to fit into and dress them. Wearing jeans will give an insight into how successful are your sports accomplishments and how far you are from your goals. 

Pay attention to your feelings: whether clothing sits looser or tighter. To attain the most accurate outcome, we offer to pick one specific piece of clothing and measure your progress in keeping with it monthly.

4. Taking Measurements 

Sometimes scale figures may be deceiving, so you should keep in mind that muscles weigh more fat. So it is significant not to limit scaling but to do the measuring to explore gradual changes.

It is worth steering clear of daily measurements. Record your neck, shoulders, waist, biceps, chest, thighs and hips sizes with a tape measure weekly, no sooner. Moreover, the time and conditions of measurements play an extremely important role, so be sure they are the same every time.

5. Blood Pressure Check

Fitness progress means more than an attractive body shape. No matter what goals you pursue: losing weight or gaining muscles, your blood pressure can present you with the overall picture of your health condition.

Heart health directly depends on blood pressure that is consequently influenced by physical activity, nutrition and stress levels. 

With regular workouts, both your body and cardiovascular system stand stronger. That way, the blood pressure can be a pointer for diminishing heart and chronic disease risks. A blood pressure watch is the best decision for keeping abreast of your blood pressure indexes.

6. Progression Photos

Some may consider post-workout photos a waste of time. However, it is doubtless a valuable experience. Every day mirror-looking may totally change our body perception. Still, it can be challenging to trace the ultimate progress throughout the path, so pictures will come in handy here. Taking photos weekly will show you incredible differences already in half a year.

All you need to enjoy such contrast over time is to picture within the same conditions, light and angles. Remember that daily weight is floating and the photo taken in the morning will differ from one after the meal. Lighting is also the key point. Poor light can generate shadows and emphasize your drawbacks, hiding the apparent results. In addition, dressing in similar outfits in each month's photos may confuse and prevent you from noticing differences.

After taking pictures, don't compare them to two days ago. It makes no sense. The most appropriate checking frames are from four to six weeks.

Final Words

Being fit is not always a synonym for muscular body shape. It is about health, well-being and fulfillment. Regular exercising and proper nutrition will gift you the body of your dream, together with decreasing health hazards and improving mental health. You can’t do without tracking your fitness progress to get this with flying colors. So stick to our tips and the first considerable results won’t be long in coming.