Tracking your progress is something many do not do, however it is a powerful motivator for any goal. For this post I am focussing on body transformation, health and weight loss, but it can apply to almost anything.

Tracking your progress is going to show you; 

1. If and when you are succeeding, and
2. Where you put in a little more focus, or 
3. Introduce another strategy. 

So often someone goes on a diet or makes a radical change with the intention of weight loss or improved health, but they have no snapshot of where they started.

This is problematic for two reasons; 

1. We have no measurable data to establish success, and
2. Without this data, we end up thinking nothing has changed 

A sneaky thing that happens in personal transformation that doesn’t get a lot of attention, is the fact that we adapt quickly to micro-changes. The problem with this is, almost all change is a micro-change. Small changes in body weight, small improvements in health, small mindset shifts. Over a 6 month period these are dramatic, but week by week, they are unnoticeable.

So, you might have 5kg of weight loss, but after a few months you adapt to what you see, and you feel like you have made no progress at all.

Here is a snapshot of the check-in form I use with my clients:

Women tell me in consultations that they gained 20kg over the past 10 years and didn’t notice until they were so uncomfortable but it felt like it happened overnight. Others tell me after they’ve lost 10kgs with me that they feel like nothing has changed. If they didn’t have check-in forms with weight and measurements to track their weight loss (and photos to compare if they’re comfortable), they wouldn’t recognise the changes as they happened incrementally. 

Even I as the coach often forget where someone has come from. We do occasionally make quantum leaps, but this is in the case of someone who has been on the brink of a breakthrough and suddenly it shifts (what you might call an ‘overnight success’ if you didn’t know the person before). But mostly, it’s small changes day by day. 

For lifestyle clients, we measure other things like digestion, mood, energy levels, sleep, relationship quality, and behavioural changes. 

Future you activity 

One final activity I find really useful is to write down on one side of a piece of paper who you are now, and what behaviours they would like to stop. On the other side you write what your future could look like, in detail. Not material items, but behaviours and lifestyle elements. 

By tracking your progress in this way, not only do you highlight where we need to go, but also what isn’t working now and specify how it could be better in the future. 

We can also go back and revisit it, noticing what has actually transformed and what we can continue to focus on. I do this activity every 12 months or so, as I recognise that most of the ‘future me’ things are actually now in the present. 

So the moral to the story here is that if you don’t track it, you might not notice it. 

Collect as much data as you can!

Jen x