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For starters, I want to apologize for not having posted the past two weeks. I got a bit off track and unorganized and just didn’t really feel like writing if I’m being honest. I’m going to try to be more consistent with both blog posts and social media posts this month. There are also some things I still need to do with the blog to make it better that I’m going to try to do this month as well. I’m going to try to kick it in high gear all around this month.
Today would normally be a progress post but there are some things I wouldn’t be able to add in like body fat percentage and progress shots so I’m going to wait until next week to do that post. Instead, I’m going to talk to you about why I think it’s important to document your fitness journey. There are multiple ways you can document it as well as multiple things you can document that will really help you along the way.
The Why
Documenting your fitness journey, or really any journey for that matter, is hugely important in your success, in my opinion anyway. It’s a good way to not only see the progress you’ve made but also give you the motivation to keep achieving the goals of your journey. No one wants to write down that they didn’t make any progress or meet their goals.
While thinking about it more these past couple days, I have actually seen a big difference in myself when I started falling off and not being consistent in posting. When I wasn’t posting, I didn’t have to tell anyone that I didn’t work out that day or that I ate off-plan. In a way, it was my little secret because it wasn’t documented anywhere. After a couple of days of that, it became really easy to keep doing things the way I used to.
A little bit of a spoiler for next week, but I think me not documenting things as lead me to this plateau that I’ve been on the past couple of weeks. Not only have I not been posting consistently, but I also haven’t really been documenting in any way. I stopped writing down what I was eating, I stopped weighing myself daily. I just kind of did whatever. Kind of staying on plan, kind of not. It was enough to keep me in one spot but not enough to keep moving forward. But I’ll go more into detail with that next week.
Ways to Document
There are so many ways to document something, it can be in a more public setting such as this and social media or it can simply be in a notebook for only you to see. It all depends on what works for you. Try one thing and if that doesn’t help, try another. I used to only document things for myself and that worked for a little while but then I fell and the only person holding myself accountable was myself. Myself, however, was not a good holder of accountability because I very easily talk myself into it being okay, I would just start again next week and then never followed through.
So I first switched to posting my goals on Facebook in February and said I would give updates every now and then. I was actually really surprised at how many people told me they would be watching out for updates and then actually did when I posted them or didn’t post them. I didn’t think many people would pay much attention but they did and that helped me tremendously. It gave me a lot more motivation to keep pushing myself for results. I had other people holding me accountable and that helped me a lot.
One of the biggest reasons I started the blog was because I’m not one to really post that much on my personal social media. This then left to I just wouldn’t post anything until I had hit a progress point that I thought was worthy to share. I never posted anything saying that I hadn’t been doing very good and there was little to no progress. I’d just hold off until I had something good to say. But with a blog, I knew that if I ever actually wanted to go anywhere with it, I would have to post consistently, regardless of if I had any progress or not. It also gives me a platform in which I can have a long post talking about how I’ve been struggling and ways I think I can combat it without being that person that puts a crazy long post on Facebook.
Things to Document
I find it really important to document multiple things related to you’re journey. Sure you can have your one main goal and that work just fine for you but, especially with a fitness journey, it’s going to help you to track multiple things. If your goal is to lose weight and you only track your weight, there may come a point in your journey where the numbers on the scale aren’t moving but you’re still making great progress. On paper, you only see that the number has been staying the same and you may start to get discouraged which can eventually lead to you falling off and losing all your progress.
However, let’s say you have been documenting things like your weight, your run times, the amount of weight you’ve been able to lift, your body fat percentage, body measurements, and been taking pictures. Now, you have multiple things to compare and you’re going to be able to much more accurately track your progress. You’re going to be able to see that even though the scale has been saying the same thing, your body fat percentage has gone down or you can see a huge difference in you’re pictures. You’ll be able to tell that you’ve been losing fat but gaining muscle which is just as good as losing weight.
All in all, it’s so important for your success to track your progress and track multiple aspects of your progress. It helps you get out of tough spots when you haven’t been making as much progress as you wanted. You can look back and see how far you’ve come and help replenish your motivation to keep going. Show yourself that you’re proud of how far you come as well as being able to see where you were and that if you stop now, you’re just going to go back to that point. Find what works for you and rock with it.
As always, I’m rooting for you! Go out there and do great things!