KEEPING TRACK OF YOUR GOALS There are a number of different philosophies about how to keep track of your goals. Some diets would not have you check your weight frequently, others do. Some might have you check your body fat measurements. Others are more concerned with how many calories and your eating habits and journaling can then be a good tool. Or, if you want to get really scientific about it you can start tracking your progress in a spreadsheet. If your diet doesnt include techniques for keeping track of your weight loss, you may want to use some of the following suggestions to help you track your progress. WEIGHING IN There are a number of things to consider about the weigh in. The accuracy of the scale is important. The number of times you weigh yourself can be daily, weekly, or even monthly. If you are on a short-term diet and expect to lose a lot of weight, you will need to check your progress more frequently. The time of day that you weigh yourself is also important, as is the time of month for women. There is evidence that weighing yourself once a day is more motivating and contributes to weight loss more than weekly or monthly readings. However, some diets are very specific about how often one can weigh themselves and you should follow the diet that youve chosen closely. Try to weigh yourself with minimal clothing in the morning before you eat breakfast. This will give you a good idea of how you are doing before you have the chance to add weight through meals. If you are a woman and you notice weight gain close to your menstrual period, it is probably due to water gain. Dont let it discourage you from your diet. Remember that weight gain isnt necessarily bad if you are also exercising. It can also indicate muscle gain. Above all try to keep scale measurements in perspective. Everyones weight can fluctuate one to two pounds per day, whether theyre on a diet or not. Do weigh yourself and keep records, but realize that body mass is not the same thing as body fat. The scale does not take into account your body type, how dense your bones are, and whether you have more muscle than fat. So, be kind to yourself and use the scale as just one indicator of progress, not to berate yourself. MUSCLE GAIN AND BODY FAT MEASUREMENTS The initial measurement of your body mass index (BMI) should have been given to you by your physician. After that you can also calculate your own BMI using a formula or a BMI calculator online. Make sure that you take into account your gender and age when doing your own BMI calculations. The body mass index doesnt really tell you the percentage of body fat, but it will tell you whether you are approaching a normal weight for people within your age and gender grouping. The BMI formula can be done in a variety of units. The calculation of BMI for U.S. units of measurement is: BMI=703 X (WEIGHT in pounds/HEIGHT2 in inches2) The calculation of BMI for U.K. units of measurement is: BMI=6.35 X (WEIGHT in stones/HEIGHT2 in meters2) The calculation of BMI for the metric system is: BMI= (WEIGHT in kilograms/HEIGHT2 in meters2) The BMI guidelines for adults are: A value of 30.0 or above is obese. A value of 25.0 to 29.9 is overweight. A value of 18.5 to 24.9 is normal, and a value below 18.5 is underweight. These readings can change depending on age so its best to find a BMI calculator online that will take the age and gender into account too when determining the BMI. This will only tell you how close you are to a normal weight for your gender or age grouping, it will not give you any idea of body fat percentages. For that you will actually have to either get a caliper test done to determine how much body fat you have. This can be done at your physicians office, a gym, or even a university. You can also learn to use the caliper yourself to determine if you are gaining muscle while losing fat. This may make you heavier, but it will also be an indication that you are becoming healthier too. You can buy a caliper online, but you will most likely need to learn how to use it properly so that your measurements are accurate and consistent. If you dont trust yourself to take good measurements, have someone at a gym do it for you to help you gauge your progress. At the very least, see if you can get someone to show you the proper way to use a caliper to test for body fat. Another effective home method of measuring body fat is scales specifically designed to do it using bioelectric impedance. The only thing to remember, if you want to use this method, is that these devices are sensitive to the water gain in your body and skin temperature. To take a good reading, dont eat or drink for about four hours before taking this test. Also, you will want to wait twelve hours after youve exercised to use a body fat scale that uses bioelectric impedance principles. You will want to learn how to convert the reading to something meaningful but it is a great fitness tool, especially using it at home. There are other types of special testing for body fat. Whether you want to have one done before and after the diet is a personal choice. They can be expensive and uncomfortable, but it may be in line with the goals youve chosen for the diet. One of these is hydrostatic weighing, which is essentially being weight underwater. You are dunked several times to try to determine the body fat, which is reflective of how much you float in the tank. Universities and some fitness places offer this type of testing, but it can be very uncomfortable and prices range from $25 to $50. There are whole body scanners that use dual energy x-ray to read bone mass and versus soft tissue mass. It is painless even though it can take up to 30 minutes to complete. The cost is very high, upwards of $100, but the accuracy is very good. If you are losing weight and gaining muscle for personal reasons, this may be a bit extreme. If your diet is to increase heart health, body fat measurements can be crucial. A higher percentage of fat in the body doesnt just contribute to obesity, but it can affect health factors too. It increases the risk of diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, osteoarthritis and gallstones. Even the risk of some cancers has been shown to be related to body fat percentages. One of the advantages of tracking more than just weight, is that if you gain weight, you may still find a reduction in overall body fat. This can help maintain your determination to stay on the diet or continue exercising even though the scale may say you are heavier. If the heaviness is muscle than you will be able to notice a difference in the overall body shape, regardless of how much you weigh, which is visually pleasing. You might also notice that the clothing you are wearing is starting to hang looser on your body and the pants are less tight. These are all indications that a diet is working even when the weight scale may suggest otherwise. Have a number of different factors to track to see if your diet is working. Obviously, if your diet is heart-healthy, you will need to track cholesterol levels. If your diet is to reduce blood sugar levels, you will need to track those. Not every diet is based on weight, even when weight is affected. Weight is just one characteristic that can be used to determine if the dieter is successful. If you are following a diet, it may be wise to keep the numbers to yourself so that you dont fall into the trap of thinking weight loss one day is equals long-term success, particularly if the goal is health or fitness. DIET JOURNALING You can track your diet in a spiral-bound notebook or you can go high-tech and get software programs to help you track your progress. The advantage to software programs is that they can often give you an idea of your nutrition goals, which are much harder to calculate by hand. Counting calories can also be much easier, but it may not be necessary if you are using a program like Weight Watchers that uses prepackaged foods with the calorie count system on the labels. Hopefully, whatever you choose, you will journal not just about the foods you are eating, but also about exercise or activity levels, body fat, and weight loss. The advantage to doing the notebook approach is that you can take it with you and write down what you ate when you are doing it, rather than waiting until the end of the day. Otherwise, you may have to write it down and then type it back into a software program to get more information out of your day. WRITING DOWN FOODS If youve started the week out with menus, odds are you wont have to write down the foods you ate unless it deviated from the menu. You will know ahead of time whether you stuck to the format or not. If later, you want nutritional assessment from a software program, you have to input that data accordingly. The only time you might need to journal for the foods, if you are following a strict diet plan is when you cheat. At that point, its important to note the behavior, not just to know how many calories you added to your diet for the day but also to get a feel for the patterns of behavior that you exhibit in times of stress. It can help you become more aware and keep you more on target later. Be sure to have an idea of how many calories you are consuming daily and whether it meets the plan or not. If you are on a system that isnt calorie- based just note the types of food you ate or any other relevant information that the diet tracks. Whatever the goal of the diet is that is what you need to track. If you are on a low-sugar diet, you need to track high sugar foods in your diet. One of the other very important items to include when you are writing down your foods, is how you felt about that meal or cheating instance. Was it good? Was it filling? Would you continue to eat it? If you are buying diet packages, try to determine what works better for you and adjust the diet accordingly. This will help you stay on track with the diet even when it calls for a meal you dont like. Substitute with something of equal value that you do like, if it happens to meet the diets requirements. GIVE YOURSELF KUDOS FOR FITNESS A diet journal shouldnt just be a morose document of all your misdemeanors and sins. It should also contain information on what you did for fitness, even if it was just parking your car at the back of a lot and walking five minutes to the front of the store. In some instances, like the Weight Watchers diet, the fitness can even take away some of the extra calories you ingested that werent a part of that days allotment. This will help to promote balance in your diet and help to ease your conscience too. If you are doing strength training to build muscles or endurance, you can put in the number of repetitions and weight used during your sessions. This is very important so that you can start building up the resistance, as you get stronger. Otherwise, you wont remember and you wont challenge yourself to increase the fitness, which is important as your metabolism adjusts to the changes in your diet and fitness program. You can include entertainment as part of your fitness goals like skiing, dancing, or golf. These may be harder to track in terms of calorie busting, but they show that you are keeping to a level of activity that should increase your fitness. You may even find that you are doing more of one activity than another and that might clue you into other ways to modify your lifestyle to make it enjoyable and active. In the fitness portion of the journal, be sure to track the body fat percentages too. This number is a better indication than weight gain as to how effective a fitness program or activity is for you. If you take frequent body fat readings and correlate it to specific fitness routines, you may find that one activity works much better for you than others. It may even be surprising if you find that yoga is more effective for your body type than running. There are a number of online fitness journals you can find that can help you figure out how to best track your fitness goals. Part of tracking your fitness activities is also to be able to tell when the best times are for you to add activities and what sort of obstacles come up to stop you from exercising. Being more aware of how to best schedule your day to include fitness and how to avoid obstacles can help you stop procrastinating and start getting healthier. You will want some sort of format that can help you spot trends and patterns in your own behavior and help you to modify them when they interfere with the plan. If you notice that youve scheduled a 6 pm gym session that never gets done, then its time to change the time or pick a different activity. Doing some activity is better than doing none and whether an excuse is valid or not, where there is a will, there is a way. TRACKING THE VITAL STATISTICS As mentioned earlier, when you are on a low-sugar diet, you will need to track blood sugar levels. If you are on a diet to increase nutrition, you have to know how to track that. If you are on a diet to lose weight, you will want to include weight statistics. How often you take those measurements depends on how long the diet is and how important it is to track your progress. At the very least, any diet, which includes fitness, should track: Your weight Your body fat percentage Other parameters, like health, cholesterol, and blood sugar level can also be tracked too. If you want to track trends and compare blood sugar levels to activity level or calories, you will need something more sophisticated than a spiral notebook.