Goals set! And now?

We talked about how important goal setting is and the value of focusing your target. Setting our purpose is only the beginning of our fitness journey. Once you find the inspiration to take the first step it’s necessary to keep your motivation flying high in order to go on working hard towards the goals you’ve set.

Visualize the finish line is important, but focus on the intermediate milestones is as much valuable. A very useful way to keep a good level of motivation is tracking your progress and compare it to the starting point. Measuring the intermediate stages will show you if you’re going the right direction and allow you to make adjustments if not.

So, how do we track progress? Weight, measurements and pictures.

Oh Yeah… pictures… No need to share them all over the social media, you can simply save them in a folder on your phone, so that they can be available any time you want to compare them and see how far you have come. Here’s the 6 positions where to start:

In piedi di fronte

In piedi di lato

In piedi piegato in avanti

Accosciata

Seduto piegato in avanti

Apertura laterale gamba

Pics from DDPY progress pictures

Let’s take the measurements… not just weight in, but all the measurements. It’s essential not to focus only on the number on the scales. Most of the time that number can be tricky and misleading, because you can weight the same and have a completely different body mass composition in percentage of body fat and muscles. Without the technicality and without needing to buy a scale that measure your body composition we can still track our progress based on the combination of weight, body measurements and pictures.

How many time you should check-in may vary, but you should consider a time not too short that doesn’t allow to see progress nor too long that can make you loose your momentum and motivation. You can choose a monthly or bimonthly check-in.

If the data difference is not very relevant, don’t get discouraged, focus on NSVs (Non Scale Victories) aka those results that are not measurable, but are tangible, for example your jeans are not as tight as before, you feel strong and energized, you feel less fatigued if you pick up a water pack, if you walk two flights of stairs you’re not panting, etc… These are little signs telling you that even if the measured progress is little you’re still going the right direction!