Are you exercising?

This week’s post goes along with last week’s post. Last week was health and this week is fitness. In my plan to get healthy, I added fitness classes but wasn’t doing them, so as you read last week, I changed my goal. And yes, I made it to both fitness classes last week. And I can now do ankle touches and actually touch my ankles.

“Physical fitness is a journey for those who exercise constantly and requires time and effort to remain proficient in our workouts. To ensure that we make sufficient progress, we need to track our exercise so we may compare results and find areas that need improvement. There are different methods to track our workouts to help us determine where we could improve to achieve our fitness goals.” — American Home Fitness I track my fitness in an app and the app includes “circles”, so I can post to a group and get words of encouragement (full disclosure: the app is Zoom).

If your fitness routine is part of a weight loss journey, then stepping on the scale every few days will help tell you if your routine is working. Keep in mind that experts say that the best way to lose weight is paring exercise with healthy eating. So you may also want to track what you are eating too.

If you are more concerned with the size of your waist (and hips) then weekly measurements are the way to go. Also, weekly photos can be helpful. I do both measurements and photos. Keep in mind that even though you are losing weight, you may be gaining muscle weight and so measurements and/or photos may be more encouraging to you than standing on the scale and seeing that all your hard work amounted to 2 lbs. lost.

If you keep a diary or journal, you can simply add your health and fitness journey to what you document.  Or you could ask yourself a series of questions to check-in.

1.    On a scale of 1-10, how am I doing with my fitness routine?

2.   If the number is below 5, what could I improve on?

3.    If the number is above 5, what area is working, and what area still needs work?

4.   Am I on target to reach my goal by my deadline?

5.    If yes, then how can I celebrate myself right now?

6.   If not, what do I need to change for this to happen?

I try to check in every two weeks, to make sure I stay on track. Also, this forces me to think ahead if there is a time when I can’t make my fitness class to substitute another kind of fitness for it.

Keep in mind your goal should be doable, start small and build up and make you feel good (Jefit). Exercise has been proven to boost one’s mood and reduce stress. Once you have done an assessment you can get back to exercising and know that you are on the right track or getting on the right track to achieve your health/fitness goals.