Challenge Tip: Track, Track, Track Your Journey

"I already know what giving up feels like. I want to see what happens if I don't."

Track your food and track your workouts. Training for your goals isn’t just about putting in the hours. It’s about training with a purpose. To truly maximize the efficiency of everything you do, start tracking your nutrition and your workouts.

How many steps a day do you take? How many minutes of heart-pumping exercise do you get each week? How many hours do you spend sitting? Most people probably don’t have answers to these questions. You likely don’t regularly keep track of your daily steps, weekly exercise, or seated time. And that’s totally fine—tracking can be a lot of work. But what if you did? What would you learn? What changes might you see in your behavior?

I don't know how often I've heard folks say that they've been doing something for 3 months and they haven't seen any results yet. Can they actually say they know what they've put into their body and how much effort they've put into their workouts? Without tracking, you can't really judge if what you are doing is actually working for your body and what changes to make to ensure you reach your goals.

As this is the last tip and only minutes left until the challenge ends, I wanted to end the challenge on the importance of tracking when you are starting your journey. Heck! I still track and I'm 3 years into it. 

Here is why I believe tracking what you are doing will be essential to your transformation and living a healthier lifestyle:

Measuring Progress: just measuring your activity can push you to move more. When you keep track of how much you spend on food, you dine out less. When you watch how many glasses of water you drink each week, you drink more. It’s human nature. By merely measuring your activity, you should see an improvement.

Setting Realistic Goals: tracking helps you figure out where you’re currently at, which is the first step in figuring out whether you’re making progress. It can also help you set a realistic goal. If you’re currently only getting 2,500 steps a day, setting a target of 5,000 makes a lot more sense than 10,000. 

Progress is not always seen: – once you’ve figured out where you are at (your baseline) keeping track will help you measure your improvement. This is crucial because celebrating your wins, even the small ones, is a big part of keeping your confidence and motivation high. Tracking gives you something to celebrate and pushes you to keep progressing toward your goal.

Identifies Problems:  people who track know immediately when they’ve stopped making progress. This helps because it allows you to course-correct. You can figure what went wrong and why. This is how you avoid doing something for a long period of time without seeing any results.

Focuses Your Attention – people who track stay on track because they’re paying attention to their behavior. You’ll notice that tracking is a bit of chore at first, but that’s kind of the point. It forces you to pay attention to the behavior you’re trying to change. It keeps it at the top of your mind and doesn’t allow you to push it down your list of priorities. Of course, over time, tracking consistently does get easier, and soon you’ll be spending less time thinking about it and more time just doing it.

Thank you so much for participating in the challenge. I pray it was a challenging, yet eye opening and educating experience for you. Please do not stop here! Let this be the first step in your journey. Keep going and the only time you should look back is to see how far you've come.