If I’m Not Losing Weight, Am I Still Making Progress?

Just the other day someone asked me, If I’m not losing weight, am I still making progress? Short answer is, of course you are! That’s only if you made enough changes in your diet and exercise regiment to facilitated that progress. But this is a loaded question, and it also got me thinking about how fixated we are on this one fitness goal, losing weight.This happens more often than we know, especially this time of the year.  It’s a New Year, perfect time to get into shape and finally lose that extra weight.  You join the gym, get rid of pop, and start eating whole grains.  But after a month of eating healthy and working out 4 times a week you still weigh the same.  What gives?  The good news is that you are making progress, bad news is that your plan is not designed towards helping you achieve your goal of losing weight.

I am willing to bet, that the only measurement you did before starting your new and amazing New Year’s resolution is weighing yourself.  But did you perform any strength or flexibility tests? How about blood pressure tests? No? What about Body Fat % test? Or Girth Measurements?  You didn’t measure any of it?  Well of course it’s going to be hard to tell if you’re making any progress if you don’t have any benchmarks.

In as little as two weeks after making changes to your diet and exercise regiment you are already making progress, even if you don’t see it on the weight scale.  It could be any one of the following or a combination of: improved strength, improved blood pressure reading, more energy, more stamina, improved girth measurements and the list goes on.

Final words of advice,  just because you’re going to start exercising and eating healthier it doesn’t mean you will start losing weight.  You need to make sure your exercise program, diet and life-style changes are directed towards meeting your specific goals.  Secondly, measure everything.