Tracking progress key to staying the course with wellness journeys

Since 2004, Canberra local Dave Nixon has trained and coached more than 6,000 people in the fitness and health industry. Here, he discusses the benefits of functional movement, performance-based and healthy mindsets to gyms, personal and group trainers.

You get a holistic view of your health 

While some might think the traditional bathroom scales are the most common, trialled and tested way of tracking progress, there are other ways to do it that don’t just confine you to changes in your weight.

Checking your overall body composition with a 3D scanner such as mPort not only gives you a holistic view of your body, but can also help with your health and the choices you make. The measurements and in-depth details that these scanners can present far surpasses the one figure shown on weighing scales.

It’s exciting to see how far you’ve come

Even though my clients don’t find it difficult to stay motivated at any time of the year, I still consider progress tracking important as it keeps them on track with how they are going with their fitness.

Documenting your progress through pictures or tracking your overall body composition stats is often a great motivation to see whether you’ve managed to stay on track during the cooler months.

It keeps you accountable to your goals

Not only does progress-tracking help you set goals, but it also keeps you be accountable to them. It helps you stay focused on what you are trying to achieve, not to mention it gives you something tangible to help measure how far you’ve come. It’s also a great tool for you or your trainer to use as a point of reference and to help you make tweaks to your exercise or diet plan if what you are currently doing isn’t working.

Instead of setting a vague goal of “lose 5 kilos in three months”, I recommend my clients to use body composition scanner to visualise their progress in real time and set goals that are more comprehensive and realistic to what they are trying to achieve.

It reinforces a healthy mindset

Instead of staying on a strict diet plan, tracking your progress regularly can give you a clear picture of what you can and can’t do. Noticing that you’ve managed to lose some body fat percentage, for example, can help reinforce that what you are doing is working and encourage you to maintain it.

This can help people stay on track for the long term rather than yo-yoing from being too strict, to bingeing when attempting to achieve unrealistic short-term results. A healthy diet should already include foods that you enjoy as opposed to being restrictive.

It can be easily accessible

Fitness wearables that show you how many steps you’ve taken and how many calories you burn each day is a great tool to help you stay on top of your goals.

Given the amount of fitness technology available these days, being smart about using the data readily available to you helps to keep you accountable and make better, more informed decisions.

Dave Nixon is an author, personal trainer, fitness expert and speaker.