When it comes to measuring your progress, what tools do you usually turn to? For most of us, we usually step onto the scale and focus on the number that flashes back at us. However, stepping onto the scale is not the most accurate way to track your progress. So, here are better ways to do so, such as using a gym workout app to log your data.
6 Alternative Ways to Measure Your Progress Using a Workout App
1. Track Your Body Fat Percentage
Measuring your body fat percentage is a much more accurate and telling way to track your progress compared to the scale.
This is because the scale does not differentiate between fat and muscle in your body. It can be a problem because even if you are losing fat, you may also be gaining muscle. However, you wouldn’t know it just by judging the scale number.
A way to get around this is to measure your body fat percentage. There are multiple ways to do this such as by getting a body scanner or using a body fat caliper.
This way, you can track your body fat percentage specifically which is a better way to measuring progress. Also, remember to note down these measurements by using a gym workout app or a journal. All your data will be in the one place, making it easy to follow.
2. Track Your Body Stats Using a Gym Workout App
Not only is recording body fat percentage a great way to track your progress but so is body size. You can use an advanced tool such as a body scanner to measure specific body part sizes or a simple one like a tape measure.
You can measure any part of your body including your chest, biceps, waist, and so forth. Knowing these measurements can show you how your body parts have grown or shrunk, individually as well as in correlation to each other, e.g. chest/waist ratio.
A good gym workout app will give you the ability to input this data so you can easily keep all your records in one place.
3. Take Progress Pictures
One of the best and inspiring ways people measure their progress is through progress pictures. You may have seen them all over Instagram, and there is a reason why they have taken over the online fitness world.
By putting together pictures side by side, you can really gain a visual insight into how much your body has changed over time.
Taking progress pictures is a really great method because when you look in the mirror every day, you don’t see the small and subtle changes in your body. It is when you look back, you can see any differences in your “before” and “after” pictures.
You can keep your pictures to yourself or use a photo sharing app such as Instagram or a gym workout app to share with others in a supportive community. You never know, your progress pictures may inspire others on their own fitness journey.
4. Hearing Other People’s Comments
Apart from progress pictures, another way to tell how your body has changed is based on other people’s (supportive) comments.
Your family and friends, especially those you haven’t seen in awhile, will be able to notice any differences that you may have missed.
Not only will this be able to confirm that you are making progress but it is a big confidence booster when people tell you that you have lost weight, or you’ve gotten bigger, depending on your goals.
5. Feel How Your Clothes Fit
Another way to measure your progress without stepping on the scale is going by how your clothes fit. This is particularly useful if your aim is to lose weight.
By trying on clothes that you wore at the start of your fitness journey, you will be able to see determine if you are on track by how it fits.
It is a really motivationally boosting method in doing so as well. This is the idea of shopping for new clothes with your newfound body and body confidence is exciting.
6. Judge How You Feel
One of the biggest indicators that you are advancing towards your fitness goals is based on how you feel.
Can you lift heavier than you could 3 months ago? Does that 1-hour group fitness training class not feel as long or laborious as it did when you first started? Can you run up those flights of stairs that you struggled to walk up before?
You know yourself better than anybody, so based on how you feel, you should be able to tell whether you are progressing and getting fitter.
The scale can be an inaccurate and also demotivating way to measure performance. The numbers simply just don’t tell the entire story and can undermine your hard work and effort. By using these methods instead, you will be able to have a much more accurate and clearer indication of your hard work and efforts.
Jefit is a gym workout app that helps you measure your progress. With the ability to track body measurements, body fat percentages and progress pictures, you can save all your data and records in one place. Not only that, with a supportive community, you will be surrounded by like-minded people to share progress and motivation.
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