Intro and Layout of the Post!
Happy Wednesday everyone! I hope this week has been enjoyable for you so far, and if it hasn’t been, then I hope this post can turn at least part of it around 🙂 The last few weeks we’ve talked a lot about losing fat, gaining muscle, realistic expectations, and step-by-step nutrition basics to help you get to your goals. This week, let’s talk about progress, and more importantly, HOW to spot your own progress while on your fitness journey.
Seeing and acknowledging your own progress is one of the BEST ways to stay consistent and motivated to keep working hard towards your goals. It is also a GREAT way to collect data on what is working for you, what isn’t, and what the next best step for you would be.
This probably sounds strange… and I’m sure you’re thinking, “Well, duh. I know how to see my own progress.” Do you really, though? Can you determine your mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual progress? Did you know that those existed, and that there is a way to see them? Can you say with 100% honesty that you don’t have a filter you see yourself and your progress through? Even as a coach who has guided people to see and acknowledge their own progress, I STILL have a tough time noticing it on myself unless someone else points it out. That is the goal of this post, at the end of this I can GUARANTEE you notice a new form of progress in yourself that you haven’t noticed before.
Progress Pictures
Let’s start with the most common ones, and move our way down the less common (but equally, if not more, important and valuable) ones. The most common form of seeing progress is through progress pictures! These are one of the hardest things to learn to see our own progress in. We see ourselves every single day, so it makes sense that it’s tough for us to spot changes, even drastic ones. What I would recommend is making sure you take progress pictures once a month at MOST (taking them week to week is inaccurate, since there is so much noise due to each day being so different in every way possible, which affects our body), and when you compare make sure to compare the very first one you took to the one you took at month 3, and then month 6, and so on! Every 3 months you’ll be able to see MAJOR changes in yourself while going through your fitness journey, and if you still can’t see anything, ask an honest and preferably unbiased source (like your significant other, close friend, or relative) to see what they can see. They will very likely point out things that you don’t even notice until they say something about it!
A big step in this is being open to accepting compliments from others. Choosing people you know are honest and trustworthy is important here, so that you can’t make any excuses as to why you aren’t able to accept the truth they’re telling you. Being mindful about the natural filter we have when viewing ourselves as humans can help tremendously too; you will gain the skill to notice negative and unrealistic thoughts about seeing your progress pictures, and be able to check and morph those negative thoughts into positive and realistic ones.
If you TRULY cannot see as much progress in your pictures every 3 months as you (realistically) would like, then a wonderful next step would be to collect that data, and make changes accordingly. Remember, even if you don’t see progress YET, that doesn’t mean this is a “fail”. This is data collecting. This is how you determine the next step, and not seeing a change is a very much expected part of this process; you will not see changes in multiple sets of pictures as you go, and you will also see tons of changes in multiple others, and this is all part of it! Keep your head up, and remember that you WILL start seeing progress every 3 months in picture form, if you are making healthy additions to your life and are constantly striving to be better every day, it is inevitable! And remember, there are MANY other forms of progress that you will spot along the way, even if it doesn’t show up in the pictures just yet.
Consistency
Another way to spot progress is in your consistency. Consistency is EXTREMELY underrated. The reason people get to goals, gain confidence, overpower motivation with action, and feel powerful is through CONSISTENCY. Every single goal that anyone has ever achieved is through consistency. Have I said consistency enough for it to stick?! I sure hope so!!
There are an infinite number of ways to track consistency; I’ll be talking about the one I like the best, and the one that my clients like as well! Most people either have a calendar on their phone, or a physical one on their desk or the fridge. Something that allows you to get a quick rush of dopamine is being able to put a little sticker (like a star, or a dot, or something super random) over the days that you stayed consistent with a goal. The goals could be anything, from putting a sticker on days you ate an apple a day to get your fruit intake up, to each day you did your scheduled workout, each day you drank 8 glasses of water, or every day you looked at yourself in the mirror and gave yourself a verbal compliment to enhance self love. I can guarantee that every time you get to put a sticker on that calendar, you’ll be even more excited to put that next sticker up there. It feels GOOD to be able to SEE little forms of progress like that. And after a while your calendar will be FILLED with little silver stars showing you your consistency. And that consistency will then lead you to your even BIGGER goals, the ones that take a tremendous amount of patience and drive to get to. Those little silver stars will keep you excited enough to continue pushing through, and will serve as a perfectly positive distraction while you keep working to get to your major goals. If you’re thinking it sounds childish, good!! We need more child-like excitement in our lives. Try it out! I HIGHLY recommend it, and I personally do it as well!
Progressive Overload (Weight, Reps, Sets)
The next positive way to track your progress is through every exercise you do; tracking the weight you lift, the amount of reps you do, and the amount of sets you’re able to get in. In order to make this work you first need to be tracking your workouts and have a structured (-ish) program that you follow; which I recommend to every single person I’ve ever met in my life. Progressive overload is a great way to see yourself get stronger and gain more endurance, which is REALLY exciting, and much easier to spot and give yourself a pat on the back for! You can’t just “fake” lifting a heavier weight, so there is no way you can talk yourself out of that form of progress. It is solid. Tracking this for my clients has proven to be the best way to bring them back to a positive mindset while they work towards a tough goal that requires a good amount of patience. And I highly recommend you use this to keep yourself motivated as well.
A great way to do this is to first track your workouts, and stick to an exercise program for anywhere between 6-12 weeks. As you track each exercise in your workout, you’ll write down how much weight, how many reps, and how many sets you did in that exercise. Then the next time you do that exercise again you start with the weight you left off with (for your first working set; you almost always want to make sure to get in a few warm-ups for the tough exercises). And you’ll keep adding how much weight you lift (continuously working on maintaining solid form while moving up in weight every time you get to your max reps), how many reps you can do, and how many sets you can do. Every time you do one more rep than normal in an exercise, THAT is progress. Every time you go up in weight on an exercise, THAT is progress. Every time you add on another set…yep you guessed it. THAT is progress too. It is impossible not to be seeing progress almost every time you go to the gym, and by the time you “max out” on an exercise for what your body can handle at that point in time, it is usually about time to change the program and exercises anyway, which means you get to start moving up in those new ones next! Even if you aren’t able to move up in weight, reps, or sets, you can evaluate how you feel and how much easier you can breathe and work through each rep, and you can evaluate how much better your form was on that exercise. There are a multitude of ways for you to see progress in the gym, you just have to know what to look for, and what progress actually is!
Energy Levels and Mood
The last thing we’ll talk about for seeing progress is your energy level during the day, in workouts, and your mood overall. One of the amazing things about exercise, that doesn’t get discussed nearly as much as it should, is how your mood and energy levels are enhanced almost right after working out. You immediately feel calmer, your cortisol (stress) levels lower, and you get a burst of dopamine (happiness!). As you make exercise and healthy sustainable eating a part of your everyday life you see how well you are able to maintain these feelings. A great way to track these are to put a paper on your fridge, or a note in your phone, that simply says:
Date:
Energy during day:
Energy during workout:
Mood:
And you can rate your energy on a scale from 1-10 and put down what your mood was like. Keep in mind each day is going to be different, and many things that could affect our energy and mood may be out of our control, but with a consistent exercise program and consistent sustainable healthy-eating you will very likely see a bump up in your energy day-to-day, along with an increase in mood. This is something we might not realize on our own unless someone points it out, or unless we actually track it (which I very much suggest you do).
Conclusion
In this post we talked about how to open your eyes to the many forms of valid progress you can see in yourself while on your fitness journey, and recommendations on how you can easily start tracking and seeing those forms of progress. Listed out they are:
- Progress Pictures
- Consistency
- Progressive Overload
- Energy Levels and Mood
I hope this gives you some insight into how many forms of progress there are, and how important and helpful it can be to track these for yourself in order to give yourself a needed boost in motivation to maintain consistency while working towards your goals. Please give some of these a try, and open your mind to the possibilities!! 😀
Have a great rest of your day, and as an added challenge at the end of this I would like each of you to acknowledge one way you have progressed today, and give yourself a figurative (or literal) pat on the back. You are doing great, keep working hard!
Until next time,
Taylor