Hello, good morning and welcome to the Body By Patrick podcast. My name is Patrick Ocheni. In today’s episode, I want to share with you the best way to measure your weight loss progress that way you can avoid a lot of stress and frustration along the way.
Before I dive into that, what I want to do is first tell you the kind of mindset you need to have.
First, you do not want to obsess over the end goal.
Instead, what you want to do is you want to focus on the process along the way.
Let’s say your goal is to lose 50 pounds in one year, a mistake that I see people make is they obsess over that 50 pounds.
That is not the right way to go.
That will only frustrate you, and get you seriously stressed out.
How do I know? I’ve been there, I’ve done that.
I’ve been a personal trainer now for over 15 years, I have trained a lot of people during that time. And, one thing that really frustrate them is when they keep obsessing over the end goal.
What you want to do instead is focus on the process.
What do I mean by that?
Are you doing the right activities that will help you achieve your end goal? Are you working out the right way? Are working out at the right frequency? Those things are the things you need to be focusing on that are intended to help you achieve your goal. Are you adjusting your eating habits appropriately to support your end goal?
Those are the things you need to focus on instead.
You want to manage the activities as opposed to focusing on the end goal.
The other mistake I see people make is, they use almost exclusively the scale as a way to measure their progress.
I cannot tell you how much of a mistake this approach is.
The scale does not tell you anything about your progress. When you step on the scale and it does not decrease the way you want it to, you think you’re not making progress and that might not be truth.
You do not want to use your scale as the sole means of measuring your progress.
Now, going back to the meat- and- potatoes, if you will, of today’s presentation, the best way to measure your weight loss progress.
Basically what I’ve done guys is, I’ve divided it into two main categories of measuring your weight loss progress.
The first category is what I call, the intangibles. And, the second category is what I call the tangible progress.
What I’m going to do first is talk about the intangible progress. Things that you will notice are improving as a result of you increasing your workouts and eating properly.
When it comes to the intangible progress that you’re going to notice, an example is, you start to feel a higher level of energy. So before you started working out, you had low energy, you felt tired all the time.
Now, you started working out so your energy is much higher. Your family will notice an increase in your energy level.
That’s an intangible. You cannot put your hands on it, but you can feel it. It’s more of a feeling.
Another example is, you might just experience better mood. You just realize that, you know what, you’re not so cranky as much anymore.
The more you work out, the better you feel. So, your mood will improve. As a matter of fact, a true story. Years ago, a client said to me, “Patrick, my son said, ‘ mom, I don’t know what you’re doing in the gym, but you are a lot happier'”.
She did not even realize how cranky she had been prior to her working out. So, until she started working out is when her family noticed a huge difference in her mood. See, right now you might be cranky all the time and all you need to do to resolve that is start working out.
The other thing is you might have an improved sleeping situation. You will start sleeping better. I had another client that said to me, “Patrick, ever since I started training with you, I sleep better. I don’t need to use any kind of pill to help me fall asleep”.
And, you start developing better mental clarity and focus. I’ve had clients of mine say to me, Patrick, ever since I started training with you, I feel like my mind is a lot sharper. At work I’m able to focus better and do better job at my place of work.
Those are just examples of intangible progress you will notice as a result of you starting to work out, lose weight and get into better shape.
Now, what I’m going to do is talk about the tangible progress that you’re going to see as you try to lose weight.
I broke them down into two parts.
What I call the visual type of measurements and the, by the numbers type of measurements.
Let’s talk about the visual measurements.
I always recommend to my clients to take pictures.
Personally myself, when I was trying to lose weight, I took a “before picture” and then I took an “after picture” and I was just blown away.
It’s one thing to say to somebody I lost 60 pounds in 180 days, but when I show them the before and after pictures, they’re absolutely amazed.
Another example is video. I love video. Nowadays, the cool thing about our phones is that, you can easily take a video, capture yourself and say, “Hey, my name is Mrs. Jones, this is the way I look today. My goal is to lose 50 pounds. This is how I look.”
So, videos are wonderful way to, again, over time, see how you are progressing other than focusing solely on the scale.
Those are my two favorite type of visual measurements that I use with my clients to measure their progress over time.
The other category of tangible measurements is what I call, by the numbers.
What does,that mean?
There are certain numbers you want to focus on to help you determine how much progress you’re making in your weight loss journey.
The three numbers that I like to emphasize with my clients are your body fat percentage, muscle mass increase, and then how many inches your waist is.
We want a decrease in body fat percentage, increase in muscle mass, and then decrease in overall inches, regardless of which part of your body you measure.
If you notice, I did not talk about body weight because your body weight does not tell you anything.
I hope you got everything I try to share with you today, guys, the best way to measure your weight loss progress is not by focusing on the scale. You should really just throw out your scale.
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