That Scale's a Capital "B"

So, how should you measure your progress and health?

My boyfriend and I were just talking about this last night. He's a Personal Trainer as well and we both have clients who only want to focus on the scale. There are way better ways to monitor your progress other than the scale.

Health-wise, what does your blood say? Have a blood panel done with your doctor and find out where you stand with your cholesterol and blood sugar numbers. Do you have diabetes or a form of hypo/hyper-thyroidism that affects your health and how you eat? Find out your starting numbers for everything and get it checked out again after changing your eating habits. Are they better or worse? Make changes and adjustments from there.

Tracking your progress otherwise is easy. First off, throw away your scale. Yes, truly. Stop reading this right now and just throw away your scale. Unless you’re obese, tracking the numbers on a scale is a waste of emotions. Those numbers cause us to focus on something that’s not all that important. If you’re obese, it can be a good starting point to have a goal to reach and see those numbers go down. Most importantly, however, it’s best to track your progress through other means.

Take before and after photos. You don’t have to show them or post them on social media. Use it for yourself as a way to see visible changes within your body.

How does your clothes fit? Are they tighter or looser?

Do you have more energy?

Do you feel better about yourself and have more confidence than previously?

Take body measurements of your waist, hips, arms, thighs. Do you see those numbers changing? If you're losing inches then that's way better than losing pounds! This means you're losing fat. If you lose pounds it could be water weight, muscle loss, fat loss... You just don't know.

Are you stronger in your workouts? This one is pretty important. If you are lifting more weight, running farther and faster, feeling less out of breath when you workout then you're already seeing your progress.

These are all great ways to measure your progress. The scale tracks your weight but it doesn’t track what you put into your mouth - well, it does if it's only junk you're putting into your body, the weights you lift, or anything else that matters. The scale causes you to focus on the wrong thing and causes a whole lot of mental heartbreak.

Throw.

The.

Scale.

Away.