Tracking The Progress Of Your Daily Weight Loss Plan

You've got your food and exercise taken care of, and now you to know if the program is working. Track your progress, and you're more likely to keep your motivation and stay aware of how you're doing. Using five major factors to track the progress of your daily weight loss plan, you can know for sure if that fat is rolling off.

1) Changes in body weight: Surprisingly, the scale isn't the best indication of weight changes.

The number shown really doesn't give you an accurate picture of how your body composition is changing. If you're losing body fat, but gaining muscle mass, you're not going to see a lower number on the scale.

But the scale is listed because it can be helpful. If you're just trying to lose weight, then you'll see a difference on the scale as part of your daily weight loss plan. Follow a couple general principles when weighing yourself.

The first is to use the same scale every time you weigh yourself. Second, weigh yourself at the same time of the day every day. Your weight can fluctuate by quite a few pounds depending on food/water intake.

2) Changes in body fat percentage, and 3) Changes in lean muscle mass. Determining these two factors should be the main goal of your daily weight loss plan.

The whole goal of this is to lose fat and gain muscle. It can be hard to get an accurate reading, though.

For most, the "skin-fold measurements" method work well enough. Most of your body fat is located right underneath the skin. By pinching the skin with calipers, you can get a relatively reliable reading.

Getting an absolute, correct measurement is not the most important aspect, though. To see if the measurements are changing over time, you have to pinch the skin the same way each time as part of your daily weight loss plan.

Once you have the reading, follow an easy mathematical formula to determine lean muscle mass. Lean muscle mass is anything weight on the body that's not fat, including water, bone and muscle mass.

To get lean muscle mass, take your weight in pounds and multiply it by your body fat percentage. This is your fat mass in pounds. Take that number and subtract it from your body weight. The resulting number is your lean body mass in pound.

One example is a person with 20 percent body fat who weighs 180 pounds.
180 x.20 = 40
180-40 = 140

This person has 40 pounds of fat mass and 140 pounds of lean body mass. Measure yourself about once a week. Do it more frequently than that, and you can get obsessed with small numbers. Any less frequently, and the numbers might not be as accurate.

4) Changes in body part measurements. Use a tape measure to start tracking.

If you're losing fat, it will show in the numbers. Measure your chest, waist, hips, upper arm and thigh. If you want detailed readings, include your forearm, calf and neck, though it probably won't show much of a change from week to week.

It's best to take measurements in the morning before your muscles get bigger from a workout.

5) Changes in appearance. This is what we all really want, right?

Just stand in front of a mirror to detect any major transformations. When it comes to the reliability scale, this is probably on the bottom end. But you can visually see from where you're losing the weight You can also take before and after pictures every couple weeks.

When you look at yourself every single day, you probably won't see a big difference. Compare two pictures though, and you'll probably see a drastic difference.

By using all of these five factors to track the progress of your daily weight loss plan, you'll know how you're doing. Not only will you be able to tell if adjustments are necessary, but seeing a result can really increase your motivation and sense of accomplishment.

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For more free tips, check out this article as well: Why Almost All Fat Loss Diet Plans Fail.