Transforming your life by transforming your nutrition, exercise, and mindset is a difficult undertaking. Yet, it is an incredibly rewarding process. Learning how to properly gauge body transformation progress is key in determining whether your lifestyle changes are working for you.
When creating your SMART goals for body transformation, measuring progress is crucial. You must keep track of your progress to stay motivated and find areas for improvement.
When entering your body transformation, it’s natural to think about the numbers on the scale. However, measuring progress with the scale will not show you the whole picture.
Today, we’ll discuss the best way to gauge your progress.
The Problem with the Scale
How many times have you heard “I want to lose 10lbs”? We work with so many incredible Superwomen who are dedicated to improving their health, but too many of them start out with a similar sentiment.
It’s great to recognize where you can improve your health and appearance, but weight alone isn’t the answer. Losing 5lbs may sound like a great milestone, but it’s not always an indicator of health.
The big problem with measuring your progress on the scale is that weight does not account for body composition.
A successful body transformation is not just about “losing weight”, it’s about improving your body composition. The scale only tells you how much you weigh, it does not tell you your body composition, or how much fat, bone, muscle, water, and minerals you have. If you just rely on the scale, you may not be seeing the full picture.
Muscle is denser than fat, and thus weighs more. If you lose 5lbs of fat, but gain 3lbs of muscle, the scale will only show you a 2lb difference!
Here’s why a scale should NOT measure your progress:
Brain dumping your thoughts to paper has many great benefits including:
- Weight fluctuates by up to a couple of pounds on a daily basis! Water intake, eating schedule, hormones, and more can impact what you see on the scale.
- It doesn’t account for body composition. The scale only tells you your weight, but this won’t give insight into muscle vs fat.
- It’s demotivating. Even seeing a “good” number on the scale can demotivate people, because the very next day the number could be different. More commonly though, our Superwomen doubt their success and progress based on the scale alone.
- It’s not a measure of health. While weight is one way to evaluate health, it’s not nearly as accurate as body composition. This is why some bodybuilders could be labeled as overweight or even obese based on body mass index! People with a lot of muscle may weigh more for their height, but that does not mean they are unhealthy.
- It can lead to unhealthy responses. Your body transformation is about building sustainable, healthy habits surrounding nutrition, exercise, and mindset. In an effort to control the scale, some people are driven toward unhealthy habits that only hurt their health and progress (like under-eating).
Measure Progress with a Goal Outfit
Instead of focusing on weight, gear your progress around a goal outfit. After all, you don’t wear the scale outside! The purpose of your body transformation is to feel confident, strong, and beautiful, which is why the goal outfit is the optimum way to support and anchor your transformation.
A goal outfit is directly related to body composition. It may sound counterintuitive, but rather than focusing on how much you weigh, focus on how much space you take up. Just think about it, if your weight hasn’t changed much but you can now fit into your goal outfit, you will take up less “space”, even though you aren’t lighter. This is because you shed fat and built muscle. Muscle is heavier than fat, but it takes up less space.
Create Your Goal Outfit
Start your body transformation journey by creating a goal outfit. Just like with any goal, you want to be realistic. The purpose of the goal outfit is not necessary to pick out the tiniest size you can find, it’s about finding an outfit that you would feel confident in.
Think about your style and what makes you feel the best, then create a goal outfit based on that. Get creative! Your goal outfit can be anything! You could pick out a day dress, evening gown, nice pair of jeans, stunning blouse, or anything in between. To build your excitement and motivation, put together a whole outfit. Choose accessories, shoes, etc to go with your outfit. All of the pieces together form your goal outfit, what you are working toward.
The purpose of your goal outfit is to drive your transformation. Imagine how you will feel in it, and maybe even plan out what you will do in it once you reach your goal. The JOC Transformation Community is here to help you track your progress the right way! By joining the community, you can learn from our dedicated coaches and other incredible Superwomen. It’s a place to share experiences, advice, challenges, and more. Share your goal outfit or learn more about properly measuring your progress by joining the JOC Transformation Community HERE.
