The Importance Of Tracking Your Progress And Results

Emphasizing the necessity of tracking your progress and results is vital to any program. It’s important in work, school, or any activity where you want to succeed. It’s the reason video games keep score. It makes the game more exciting and provides a benchmark for improvement. The same is true of fitness. If you’re exercising, tracking your results shows you’ve made progress. If you’re making dietary changes, tracking your food can be an eye-opener, especially if you’re eating more than you think.

Tracking results can include many factors.

Most people track inches and weight, based on their fitness goals. That doesn’t mean you should limit your tracking to that. You can also track how you feel and your energy level. You can even do the stairs test, checking how many times you can go up and down a staircase before you get too tired. If you’re exercising or making dietary changes to reduce blood pressure or blood glucose levels, tracking those factors gives a visual picture of what helps. If you have a setback in either and track your food intake, the results may help identify offending foods.

Tracking your workout and diet provides valuable information.

You’ll learn more about your body the more information you track. Tracking your workout can identify areas where you need extra work and where you’re making the most progress. If you track food intake, you can note how you feel after a meal. It can help you identify any food that causes issues. The act of recording the food you eat makes you more aware of unconscious eating, like passing a candy dish and tossing back a few M&Ms.

Recording results keeps you accountable.

You may think you’re working your hardest or eating healthy and even convince yourself, but the proof on paper may differ. Not only does it hold you accountable for slacking, but it also can show how hard you’ve worked and what great results you’ve gotten. Tracking your progress works best if you share your results with another person. It’s one reason a personal trainer gets such good results. The trainer holds people accountable. Studies show that even a phone call checking progress can improve the chances of continuing a workout program.

• Fitness trackers add a modern touch to tracking food intake and exercise. Some trackers have evolved beyond pedometers and track heart rate, sleep patterns, and total calories burned.
• Tracking your food intake can tell you a lot, especially when you add other information, like your mood. If you’re an emotional eater, you’ll see a pattern and can work on ways to deal with the impulse. Tracking food also forces you to learn portion size.
• If you’re not getting the results from your exercise program, tracking helps you make changes. You may need to switch out exercises, get more intense, or increase the number of repetitions.
• Finding the right diet and exercise program to achieve your goals is the first step. Tracking those results is next. Personal trainers can help you do both.

For more information, contact us today at Thrive Fitness!