I have a question for you:

What’s the only thing worse than your plan not working?

The answer?

Not knowing if your plan is working.

It’s a lesson I learned the hard way. 

When I first started trying to get lean, I just wanted to lose some weight.

So I ate “clean” and worked out every day.

But the truth was, I couldn’t tell you if I was losing any weight or not.

Like many beginners, I was so excited about getting started that I didn’t bother to track my progress.

I had no clue if the changes I made to my lifestyle were helping or hurting.

It wasn’t until I started weighing myself that I found out I wasn’t making any progress … I had wasted 2 months for ZERO results. 

Maybe you’ve experienced this too?

If you don’t track your progress, how will you know if you’re getting closer to achieving your goals? 

If you want to change something, you should track it. Trying to get results by feel alone is likely to leave you disappointed. 

• That’s because we respond in different ways to the same lifestyle choices. Tracking your progress will help you understand how your actions affect your body (and learn what works best for you).

• Changes in your body can also be hard to notice from day-to-day. Without tracking, it’s difficult to see how much your body and health have improved (or not). 

• Tracking progress lets you monitor the effectiveness of your diet and exercise plans (and alerts you to when you should make smart changes when needed).

If you’re serious about looking, feeling, and performing your best, you owe it to yourself to use 15 minutes a week to track your progress.

The more effort and consistency you put into tracking your progress, the better your data.

And with better data, the more likely you will make the best decisions to help you achieve your goals. 

You don’t need any fancy technology either. 

For most people, all you need to track your progress well are:

• Pen and paper (or electronic alternatives). 

• A digital body weight scale. 

• A digital food scale.

• And consistency.

1) Tracking Changes In Your Body Weight 

Why should you track your body weight?

Every tissue in your body (including all muscle, fat, organs, and bones) weighs a certain amount. 

Your total body weight is the sum of every one of those tissues, plus the water we drink, the foods we eat, and “waste” in your body. 

Total body weight = body tissues + water and undigested food in your body + waste products in your body

Body weight is one of the most important (and convenient) variables we can track to judge if we’re getting to our goal. Whether that’s losing fat, gaining muscle, or even eating healthier.

The right way to track your body weight is to keep the weighing conditions consistent:

• Weigh yourself once a day. 

• Weigh first thing in the morning, after you’ve used the bathroom.

• Weigh yourself before you eat or drink anything.

• Keep the amount of clothing you’re wearing while weighing yourself consistent. 

The purpose of daily weigh-ins is to generate your 7-day average weight for a week. 

This is the most accurate method to determine changes in your bodyweight.

That’s because your weight will fluctuate daily due to factors other than changes in your body tissues. 

The factors causing fluctuations include:

• How much water is in your body. This can be responsible for weight changes up to several kilograms … even within hours. 

• How much undigested food you have in your stomach and intestines. If you eat a very large meal, you could be several kilos heavier until it’s processed.

• How much “waste” you have in your colon. 

• For women, hormonal shifts during certain phases of the menstrual cycle can cause you to hold more water. 

The key message here is when we want to change our weight, our real goal is to change how much body tissues we have.

(For most people, that’s losing fat and gaining muscle.) 

Any changes to our body weight as a result of factors such as water do nothing more than confuse and frustrate us. They may also cause us to make unneeded changes to our diet and exercise plans.

For example:

You decide to weight yourself once every 2 weeks.

You start working hard and after 2 weeks you’ve lost 2 kilograms of fat. But on your weigh-in day you’re holding an extra 3 kilograms of water.

Your scale weight will be 1 kilogram heavier. You might think you’ve gained fat and make unnecessary changes to your diet (or even give up). 

But if you get a weekly average weight, these daily fluctuations will “balance out.”

You end up with number that’s a much more accurate reflection of what’s happening to your body. 

Once you have your 7-day average weight, the goal is to compare your number from one week to the next.

Over time, you will start to notice trends. 

If the trend is going up over time, you’re gaining body tissues. If the trend is going down over time, you’re losing body tissues.

From there, you can make adjustments to your diet and exercise plans based on your results and goals.

Quick Tip: Tracking your body weight allows you to determine if your rate of weight loss or gain is ideal. 

Lose weight too fast and you risk muscle losses and negative changes to your metabolism. Gain weight too fast and you will put on unnecessary body fat. 

• The “ideal” rate of weight gain is 1% of your current body weight per month. 

• The “ideal” rate of weight loss is 0.5 to 1% of your body weight per week (your rate can be higher the more excess weight you carry).

These can be small numbers, which is why tracking is so important.

2. Tracking Your Progress Using Pictures 

Why should you take progress pictures?

Your scale weight doesn’t distinguish between fat and lean body mass. It’s also hard to picture what the scale changes actually look like. 

And because you see yourself every day, it can be hard to judge any changes you’ve made to your body over time.

That’s why you need to take progress pictures if you want the most accurate reflection of how well you’re doing. 

Here’s how to track your progress using pictures:

• Take progress pictures at least once every 4 weeks.

• Take at least two photos, one from the front and one from the side. 

• Keep photo conditions as consistent as you can. Use the same lighting, camera, camera angles, time of day, and poses.

When you compare your pictures every four to six weeks, your progress becomes obvious.

3. Tracking Your Food and Dietary Adherence

Why should you track your food and dietary adherence?

You need two things to achieve a great physique.

First, you need to have a great nutrition and exercise strategy in place.

Second, you need to be consistent.

If you find you’re not getting the results you want, you either have:

• A good strategy that you’re not following well enough.

• Or a strategy that’s not the best it can be.

To be able to make the right adjustments when your results suffer, you need to track your adherence rate.

Here’s how to track your food and dietary adherence: 

• Rate your dietary adherence as a percentage of the number of days you met your nutrition and dietary targets. 

What exactly those targets are (and the level of detail) are up to you to decide. The key is to produce some data to help you make decisions in the future. 

Here are some examples of nutrition and diet targets you could track: 

• If you’re just starting out, you could track your eating behaviours and food choices. Your goal might be to have some vegetables at every meal, cook at home at least 5 times a week, and limit fast food to once per week. 

• If you’re more advanced, you might start using a food scale and tracking calories. Your goal could be to be within a certain range of your daily calorie target.

• If you’re very advanced, you might even be tracking individual macro-nutrients. Your goal could be to come within a certain range of your protein, fat, and carbohydrate targets. 

Here’s how adherence tracking works:

a) Start by listing out all your dietary targets on a blank piece of paper or a journal (or electronic document).

b) Every time you meet a target, give yourself a tick. Note down any factors that helped you meet your target. 

c) Each time you fail a target, give yourself a cross. Note down how and why you failed to meet your target.

d) At the end of a week, add up your total number of targets and subtract all the crosses.

This gives you the number of times you adhered to your diet plan in a week.

e) Divide the number of times you adhered to your plan by your total number of diet targets. Multiply this number by 100 to get a percentage-based adherence score. 

So if you have 20 total weekly dietary targets and failed to meet 2 targets, then you have achieved 90% adherence (20 targets – 2 failed targets = 18 targets met, 18 targets met / 20 targets x 100% = 90%).

Whether a score is good or bad depends what you were personally aiming for.

You might be an experienced health enthusiast aiming for 95%. 

Or you might have just started your journey and are happy with 85%.

For most people, aiming for 90% adherence will likely lead to consistent health, body, and performance improvements. 

Quick Tip: Perfection is not realistic to aim for. It will set you up for failure. 

Your targets need to be appropriate for your experience level and current situation. It’s also important to build flexibility into the system to make things sustainable.

You don’t want your entire life to revolve around your diet.

Most of the time, try to do your “best.” But remind yourself that “good” or “better” are also acceptable options.

If you do the right thing 90% of the time, you can be flexible with the other 10%. This allows you to live a normal life with social events, night outs, and holidays.

If you find you’re having problems with adherence, look back on how and why you failed to meet your targets. Can you notice any patterns?

• Maybe you’re eating out a lot and don’t know how to make good choices in restaurants. 

• Maybe you haven’t stocked your kitchen with the foods you should be eating. 

• Maybe you still keep a lot of tempting junk foods around your house.

• Maybe you have trouble digesting some of the foods you planned to eat. 

• Or maybe you feel hungry all the time.

All the problems above can be solved. The hard part is identifying them. And that’s why you need to consistently track your dietary adherence.

4. Tracking Your Exercise Adherence And Performance

Why should you track your exercise adherence and performance?

You must exercise if you’re serious about transforming your body and health in the best way possible. And once you start exercising, you should apply the same progress-tracking mentality. 

Here’s how to track your exercise adherence:

• Rate your training adherence as a percentage of the number of sessions completed each week. Just like you did with dietary adherence.

This figure is not how well you thought you performed. We will track that separately.

a) Start by planning out your training sessions for the upcoming week. You can use a calendar, a journal, or a blank piece of paper (or electronic document).

b) Every time you complete a training session, give yourself a tick. Note down any factors that helped you complete the session.

c) Every time you fail to attempt or complete a training session, give yourself a cross. Note down how and why you failed to attempt or complete the session.

d) At the end of a week, add up your total number of total training sessions and subtract all the crosses. This gives you the number of times you adhered to your training program.

d) Divide the number of sessions you completed by your total number of weekly sessions. Multiply this number by 100 to get a percentage-based adherence score. 

So if you completed 4 out of 5 weekly sessions, you’ve achieved 80% adherence. 

If you’re consistently below 80%, look back on how and why you failed to stick to your training plan. Can you notice any patterns?

• Maybe you need to re-prioritise your schedule. 

• Or maybe you should adjust the number of days in your training plan so you can stick to it (this may be the case if you’re just starting out).

If you’re not sticking to your training plan, then you can’t expect to make progress with it.

And if you’re not being consistent, it’s hard to judge the effectiveness of your training program.

After adherence, you should track your exercise and training performance:

Your body adapts to exercise by becoming bigger, stronger, and fitter. But once adaptation has occurred, training the same way won’t be as beneficial as before. 

To keep getting results, your level of training must also progress over time. That means you should be tracking your training performance.

Depending on what type of training you’re doing, that could mean tracking and increasing:

• How often you train per week (training frequency).

• How hard you train every session (training intensity).

• How much work you do when you train (training volume).

• How long you training session lasts (training duration). 

You should also note whether you’re recovering properly from your sessions. 

If you are not progressing as expected, or are unusually sore, then you might need to adjust your training program.

You might find it useful to keep a detailed training log using a notebook or electronic spreadsheet. This gives you a record of how you trained previously so you can choose how to progress in the future.

5. Tracking your sleep quality and stress levels 

Why you should track your sleep quality and stress levels:

Your sleep quality and stress levels may affect your body weight, eating pattern, training performance, recovery, and more. They can also affect each other.

You should do your best to avoid continued periods of poor sleep and high stress.

• Poor sleep can increase your hunger while decreasing energy levels. It can also impact your recovery and mood. This may cause you to overeat and miss your training sessions. 

• Periods of high stress can hurt your training performance and recovery, affect your sleep, and even lead to comfort eating. It can also cause your body to hold more water and “hide’ your fat loss. 

The key is to catch and address poor sleep and high stress before they can cause significant harm. 

Here’s how to track your sleep quality and stress levels (if you DON’T have advanced tools):

• Rate your weekly sleep quality and stress levels out of 5.

a) For sleep, a score of 0 would equal poor sleep, and a score of 5 would equal very good sleep.

b) For stress, a score of 0 would equal low stress, and a score of 5 would equal very high stress.

If you always have poor sleep and high stress, you should examine your lifestyle and make suitable adjustments.

Putting It All Together: How To Use Your Data To Help You Achieve Your Goals

The more effort you put into tracking your progress, the more data you will have to help you make smart decisions.

At the end of the day, only your results can tell you whether you’re truly doing the right things for your body.

Even if you think your food choices are ideal, if you’re not feeling any better, then your diet isn’t where it needs to be. 

And even if you feel your training is effective, if your body isn’t getting better, then you need to make changes. 

By taking consistent measurements of your progress, you can:

• Assess the results of your actions and determine if you’re heading in the right direction (or not). 

• Note changes in the way your body looks, feels, and performs (while controlling for day-to-day fluctuations). 

• Have real feedback on how well you’re adhering to your nutrition and exercise plans. 

• Judge the effectiveness of your diet and exercise plans, and decide if changes are needed.

• Identify any major limiting factors to your diet and training adherence (and reasons for plateaus).

This is the basis of good decision making: measure key progress indicators, and make decisions based on the results of these measures.

The more effort you put into tracking your progress, the more data you’ll have to help you make smart decisions. 

Look at all your data consistently and without bias. I recommend you take time every week to look at how you’re progressing. Doing this gives you an ongoing measure of your success. 

If you’re getting the results you want, awesome. Keep at it. 

If you are not getting the results you want, that’s okay too. 

Because you will have the information you need to make the right decisions to help you overcome your challenges.

Now you know how to track your progress, what’s next?

Start by taking action on what you’ve just learned and put in place your system for tracking progress. 

If you’re feeling overwhelmed, start by picking ONE thing to track.

I suggest starting with body weight and working your way down the list in this article.

Let me know if you need help at any point.