by Greg Stark - Resident Fitness Expert
The reality is when most people come to see me they want to change the way they look. But as time goes by I see the focus shift from how exercise makes they look but how exercise makes them think and feel. The problem is people measure their success by what the scales tell them. There is nothing more demotivating than feeling like you are doing all the right things with exercise and nutrition and seeing no results.
For sustainable health we need to enjoy the process and not just strive to be thin.
Now don’t get me wrong, I still check the scales every couple of weeks to see if I’m sticking at my fighting weight. I use it as an accountability tool for some of my clients whose weight correlates to their lifestyle behaviours. For some people the scales are a great truth machine, for others it is the biggest motivation killer.
For sustainable health we need to enjoy the process and not just strive to be thin. It’s often more a case of not changing the way you look but changing the way you see. Weight is just a measure of your relationship with gravity, but it's not the only measure you should use to track your progress. Lean muscle can see the scales creeping up - but it's also a sign of progress from your workouts.
So if you’re not measuring weight how do you track your success? Try to focus on behavioural measures rather than outcome measures, for instance:
- Number of training sessions a week
- Amount of steps a day
- Hours of sleep a night
- Amount of water a day
- Different types of vegetables a day
If you did want to analyse your body composition which will give you a break down to the milligram of your fat, muscle and bone mass. We utilise them as part of our 8 Week Better You Challenge. To learn more click here.
