12 Tips for Tracking Your Weight Loss Progress

When it comes to any weight loss journey, one thing that people often underestimate is 
the power of tracking your progress. This can be done in many forms, including using a 
planner, writing in a journal, taking pictures, posting your progress on social media, and 
many other ways. 

Why is this important? When you track your progress, you are creating a document of 
your entire weight loss journey. You can look back on it to see how far you have come 
every time you are struggling with a weight loss stall, not liking how you look, or feeling 
like you aren’t getting anywhere. 

Here are 12 tips for tracking your weight loss progress. 


1. Always Be Honest

The reason we are starting with this tip is because of how important it is, and also 
because of how easily people miss it. You really need to be honest when tracking 
anything during your weight loss journey, from what your body realistically looked like 
and how much you at each day, to your thoughts and feelings during each phase of 
weight loss. 


2. Track Your Food and Meal Ideas

The first way to track your progress during a weight loss journey is by tracking what you 
want to eat, your food-related goals, meal ideas, and what you actually eat. This isn’t 
just part of tracking your journey, but in your progress as well. You will see over time 
how what you eat changes, whether you develop new nutrition habits, or you begin to 
cook more meals from scratch. 


3. Track Your Water Intake

Another way to track what you do during your journey that lets you see your progress is 
by tracking how much water you drink. Your hydration actually plays a huge role in your 
weight loss journey. Water helps to keep you full, hydration can help prevent muscle 
cramps and fatigue, and it also helps with water retention. 

Choose a water goal in the beginning of your journey, then you can track your progress 
over time. You might find that you are drinking more water than other beverages, or it 
easier for you to drink water over time without having to track each glass or ounce.


4. Track Your Fitness Progress

This is a great thing to track when you want to see your progress! Not only your fitness 
ability as you go through any type of workout program, but also how your body looks. 
Fitness provides so many benefits, including better strength and agility, more flexibility, 
better heart health, and of course a more toned physique. 

There are a few ways to track your fitness progress. Here are some of our favorites:

Pictures and measurements – The first way to track fitness progress is with a 
combination of pictures and measurements. Pictures allow you to see the changes in 
your muscles and toned body, while measurements give you a little more specific data. 

Fitness tests – You can do your own fitness tests by choosing what you want to test 
yourself on, such as how long it takes to run a mile or how many reps of a strength 
exercise you can do, then try it at different increments. This might be on your first day, 
then on a weekly or monthly basis. 

Advancing to higher levels – Lastly, you can measure your progress by attempting 
higher levels. This might be running farther or faster, using heavier weights for the same 
workout, or exercising for longer stretches of time.

5. Weigh-in Regularly

This is probably the first thing you think about when you want to track your weight loss 
progress. The reason we have it a little further down the list is because while it lets you 
see if you are on track with losing weight, it isn’t even close to being the best way to see 
your actual progress. Things like your body composition, how your clothes fit, and 
progress pictures tend to show a lot more than the scale.

But we understand why you would want to weigh yourself as well. Because weight loss 
is not linear and your weight can fluctuate every day for many reasons, we recommend 
weighing in regularly, but not too often. If you weigh yourself every day, you might get 
caught up on the numbers and stress over the fluctuations, which can cause mental 
distress that leads to unhealthy coping mechanisms. This is only going to hurt you in the 
long run. 

A better idea is to weigh yourself about once a week. This is often enough to see 
progress, but not too often where your results are fluctuating too much.


6. Take Measurements

What might be even better than weighing yourself is to take measurements! Even if you 
didn’t take your measurements when you started your weight loss journey, today is the 
perfect time to start. 

With measurements, you are able to see the numbers go down on different areas of 
your body, not your overall weight as a whole. So, it is actually gives you mor of a visual 
of where the weight is coming off. 

Use a soft, fabric measuring tape to measure areas like:

Neck
Chest/bust
Shoulder width
Waist
Hips
Thighs
Arms


7. Take Pictures

Remember to take pictures! So many people regret not taking before pictures or 
progress pictures throughout their journey, just because they weren’t happy with how 
their body looked. But this is why it is so important. 

You might not be able to see the progress when you look in the mirror, but you can 
definitely see it when you compare pictures of you standing in a similar pose and 
wearing a similar outfit. 

You don’t have to take pictures often, but aim for every few weeks or when you reach 
different milestone goals. Maybe you are trying to lose 50 lbs, so you take a picture 
every time you lose 5-10 lbs. You will be able to see your progress clearly.


8. Add in Habits

The progress you make during your weight loss journey is not just in how your body 
changes, but how your mind and lifestyle changes as well. This is why we recommend 
also writing down your habits, and tracking them each day.

These should include any healthy habits that you have changed during this journey, or 
that you feel are helping with your weight loss. 

Some healthy habits might include:

*	Enjoying a healthy breakfast each morning
*	Going for longer walks with your dog
*	Parking further away in a parking lot
*	Doing yoga or stretching during your morning routine
*	Being more active throughout the day
*	Cooking at least 3 meals at home each week
*	Going to sleep earlier


9. Check-in Every Day

Whether you use a planner, journal, or another form of tracking your progress, it helps 
to do it every day of your journey. This helps you to stay motivated and set your 
intentions every morning for your weight loss journey, and create healthy habits that you 
commit to each day. 

It is also a great way to stay motivated, which is something you will struggle with many 
times during your journey. Checking in can be as simple as just writing down what you 
ate, a new habit you tried out today, or what you are grateful for. This is an amazing 
way to stay on track.


10. Make Your Mental Health a Priority

This is where you look at how your mindset has changed during this journey, and look 
at the progress you have made mentally and emotionally. These changes can come in 
many forms, including having a more positive mindset, challenging your limiting beliefs, 
reducing stress you once had about the process of losing weight, and dealing with 
emotional or binge eating. 

You can do this in a journal that you use every day for your weight loss journey, or one 
that you only pull out when you want to discuss your thoughts or mental health in a 
journal. However, it is a good idea to check in as often as you can, and really consider 
how your mental state is. 


11. Write Down Your Thoughts

Along with tracking more specific areas of progress like your weight, measurements, 
and strength, don’t forget to write down your thoughts as well. This goes hand-in-hand 
with checking in, but we really encourage doing it every time you use your weight loss 
journal or planner. 

Even if you can only write one small paragraph, it is really beneficial to write how you 
feel that day. This can be if you are still hungry or feel satisfied, how your workout went, 
how you are feeling mentally, what you are struggling with. Be honest and write 
something down every day in order to track the progress during your journey.


12. Set Rewards for Progress

Last but not least, let’s talk about rewards for your progress. The reason we recommend 
setting rewards for your progress is because it can help keep you motivated. These can 
be rewards for certain amount lost, or for your consistency.

For weight lost, it might be every 5 lbs you lose, every week you lose 1-2 lbs if that is 
your goal, or even larger amounts if that is more relevant to your weight loss goal. 

When you set rewards for consistency, it is more about how long you go while staying 
on track. This might be a gal of 3-5 days of exercise a week, going 30 days where you 
stick to your calorie deficit, or just tracking your food and exercise every day for a 
specific amount of time. 

Choose what type of progress you are aiming for, then have small rewards each time 
you hit one of those goals.



