It’s a pretty safe assumption that most guys want bigger arms. While they are nowhere near as impressive as a big set of traps, you still don’t want to have an extra six inches of space in your shirt sleeves, that’s for sure. So the question is how to build bigger arms? The answer is not as simple as you might assume. If it were easy, you would see tons of guys walking around with 18 inch arms. But that simply isn’t the case.

It’s been said over and over again that in order to add an inch to your upper arms you need to gain ten pounds of body weight. This advice has become gospel and it seems that nearly everyone agrees with this these days. Real world evidence shows that this is not the case, however. Walk into any public gym on a Monday night at five o’clock and you will see quite a few skinny guys, weighing no more than 170 pounds, who are sporting decent sized arms.

Many of them probably have not gained more than 10 or 15 pounds total since they started training but they all have put more than an inch or two on their arms. This is because localized hypertrophy/ muscle growth will take place if enough volume is present, without a large increase in body weight. Look at the calves on soccer players or the forearms on mechanics. But this only happens up to a certain point.

So these young guys read in some magazine about how to build bigger arms and start by doing ten sets of arms two or three days a week. The volume is enough to elicit a growth response and they may even get a good eight weeks out of this and a quick two inches of arm growth in the absence of any significant weight gain. Seems to defy the ten pounds per inch rule, right?

But what happens after that? Where do they go from there? The gains will halt and there will be absolutely no more arm growth whatsoever unless they make some drastic changes. And that is the pitfall of high volume training – where can you go when you plateau? Add more volume? At what cost? How much volume can you add? If ten sets isn’t enough should you try twenty? And then thirty? And eventually a hundred?

There’s nowhere to go with this approach. Like I said, it’s great for some quick gains on your arms but isn’t a long term approach. Once you hit a plateau you have no choice but to start lifting heavier weights and eating more. More weight on the bar and more food on your plate is the fastest way to increase the size of any body part. All the fancy supersets, drop sets, tri sets, pre exhaustion, post exhaustion techniques in the world won’t help in the least if you are not doing those two very important things.

Beginners can train the arms three times per week and intermediate and advanced lifters seem to do better training them twice per week. Stick with big exercises like close grip chin ups, barbell curls, hammer curls, towel curls, dumbbell curls, parallel bar dips, close grip benches, and lockouts.

You shouldn’t need more than 2-4 sets of biceps and triceps twice per week to achieve optimal growth, providing that you are always increasing your loads – never forget progressive overload – and steadily adding more calories to your diet. After a couple of heavy sets finish your arm workout by getting the biggest pump possible with one or two higher rep sets.

Technorati Tags: bigger arms, build, hypertrophy, Jason Ferruggia, muscle building, muscle growth, progressive overload, volume

With the hectic pace many of us are living at nowadays, few people seem to make time for a real, healthy breakfast – maybe we slurp down a coffee and eat an Egg McMuffin on the way to work. But few of us sit down, at home, to eat breakfast before heading for work or school. This isn’t just an unhealthy way to eat, it’s also a recipe for disappointment if you want to build muscle fast. We already know nutritional support is important, and there is a reason that breakfast has been called the most important meal of the day.

When you wake up in the morning, your body has been through a prolonged period of starvation. Already in a catabolic state, your muscle is being rapidly wasted away. If you want to build muscle, you have to move into an anabolic state as soon as possible. Eating a proper breakfast is the quickest way to do this. This will not only help you to gain muscle mass but will also help you to lose fat throughout the day.

Because of this period of starvation your protein levels are very low, so are your blood sugar and glycogen levels, and your body is severely dehydrated. To support your goal of building muscle, you should correct this deficit of nutrients and water with 45 minutes of waking up. The one thing that allows you to do just that is a good breakfast.

This will allow your blood sugar and glycogen levels to get back to normal, jump start your fat burning metabolic rate, and reverse muscle catabolism. Your entire body will also get rehydrated. For best results, you should eat as soon as possible after you wake up. While you shouldn’t wait more than 45 minutes, if you’re not hungry, wait a few minutes.

Because you’re trying to feed and build your muscles, high quality protein should be the first and main component of your breakfast. You’ll want to get about 30 to 40 grams of protein from a whey protein shake, lean meat, or eggs. With this, your body will not consume the protein in your muscle.

After the proteins, you should get two portions of a moderate to high glycemic index carbohydrate.
Carbs that are higher on the glycemic index will refill your glycogen stores quicker.

Examples of high glycemic carbs are potatoes, bread, instant hot cereals and flake cereals.

With the two portions of carbohydrates and one portion of protein, you need to also drink at least 8 to 16 ounces of pure water to begin to rehydrate your body.

Consuming a tablespoon of flax seed oil and/or extra virgin olive oil at this time will also help you gain lean muscle. Don’t worry about these fats; these are very healthy and will help move those nutrients through your body, which in turn helps you feed and build muscle. If this is your goal, and I assume it is if you’re reading this, give this breakfast a try and see what it does for your results!

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Instead of the standard ab workouts full of crunches, situps, leg lifts, etc., try some metabolism-boosting high intensity workouts that work the entire body including the abs… This will help you build rock hard abs & core muscles, but you’ll also create a much better fat-burning workout than a typical ab workout would be…

I’m going to show you an example today of a great “ab workout” that doesn’t include any direct “ab exercises” at all. It’s in a tri-set format (similar to a super-set but alternating between 3 exercises).

The 3 exercises are renegade dumbbell rows, front squats with barbells and mountain climbers. A good rep scheme to use with this could be 4 sets of 8 reps for each exercise, or maybe 5 sets of 5 reps of each exercise. Mountain climbers can be done for a time interval (such as 30 seconds) instead of “reps”.

Renegade dumbbell rows are done starting in a pushup position with the hands on 2 dumbbells. You then row one dumbbell up while stabilizing your body with the other arm. Bring the dumbbell back to the ground and alternate the rowing arm while stabilizing with the opposite arm. This stabilizing effect during the rows creates incredible work for your entire midsection core area. Trust me… you’ll feel it in the abs!

Front squats are of course similar to back squats but with the barbell in front of your body on the front of your shoulders, instead of resting on the upper back. You stabilize the barbell on your shoulders by crossing your arms and pushing your fists into the bar against your shoulders while keeping your elbows out in front of the body.

This takes a little practice at first, so you will want to seek a professional trainer at your gym to help you with the form. Front squats require extreme stabilization strength from the abs due to the barbell weight being shifted to the front of the body instead of the back. Even though this is mostly a leg exercise, this one will work the abs big time!

The beginning and end point…

The mid-point

Mountain Climbers are done by starting in a pushup position and then moving your feet so that your knees are moving in under your chest and then back out to starting position. It sort of resembles climbing a mountain but flat on the floor. If you want an advanced version, you can also shuffle your hands 8-10 inches forward and backward in addition to the leg movements. This really makes it a full body exercise and MUCH more difficult than standard mountain climbers.

After finishing each exercise of your tri-set, rest about 30 seconds before starting the next exercise. Rest about 1-2 minutes after completing each set before repeating.

This will give you one of the best ab workouts you’ve ever had without even doing any direct ab exercises. You’ll see what I mean after you try it!

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The 5×5 weight training system is one of the oldest muscle building programs in the book and has stuck around forever. 5×5 is good and 5×5 is bad; it just depends on the situation. There are a few ways that the 5×5 muscle building system is implemented…

The first way that people use the 5×5 system to build muscle is that they work up to a particular weight as they warm up and then stick with that weight for five sets of five. So you need to choose a moderate weight that you can handle for that many sets. In essence, the fifth set will be the only set that is quite difficult.

This is a decent muscle building method but largely a waste of time for anyone but a beginner. There is too much volume at too low an intensity level for building muscle. For beginners and early intermediates, I think this 5×5 system is a good one. When you are neurologically inefficient, you seem to respond better to a few more repeated efforts. I still don’t know if five sets are really necessary though; 3×5 is probably better in most cases.

The next way to use the 5×5 system to build muscle is by starting with a heavy weight that they can barely get five reps with, and then lowering the weight with each subsequent set for a total of 5. Again, I think this is too much. The only set that was worth doing was the first and maybe the second. This is not the optimal way to build muscle.

The third way I have seen this system employed is to work up to a heavy weight that you can barely get five with, and then keep lifting that same heavy weight for the next four sets no matter how many reps you actually get. What passes for progress is made each week by trying to get more reps in the subsequent sets at that same weight, til someday you might really get to 5 x 5. This is a favorite of one particular egomaniacal strength coach and like everything else he recommends, is total crap.

The last way that the 5×5 system is used to build muscle is by doing five increasingly heavier sets so that only your last set is really tough. Basically the other sets are warm ups so you are really just warming up through 4 to get to a one set/five rep max, or very close to it. If this is the case, it’s really 1×5 with 4 warm up sets, and not 5×5. It’s a bit of a misnomer. But if I had to pick one, this would be the best method.

Working up through those 5 and then adding a down set at 90% of your best is an even better option for building muscle. Or you could do a very heavy set of five but leave a little something in the tank and then go for broke on the second set. There is some evidence which shows that this second option may even be the better choice simply because the body may not function optimally during the first heavy set. This is due to the laws of homeostasis and various things of this nature.

The first set causes shock and certain protective mechanisms may set it which prevents the first heavy set from actually being the best set. The job of the first heavy set may be to provide neural arousal and prepare the body to go all out on the second set. This is something that people have to play with on their own and see what approach helps them build muscle fast.

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No matter how well we understand the value of training to burn fat, we still find ourselves declaring, “I just don’t have time to get to the gym!”. That won’t be a problem once you understand how you can get a proper fat burning workout done with basic or minimal equipment. Or no equipment at all!

There are lots of choices in what equipment to use but you don’t need fancy equipment or a membership at the local gym or swanky new disco-meets-health-club. All that is really required for your fat burning workout is good old-fashioned barbells and/or dumbbells… or less. In fact, you can work your entire body from head to toe with a good set of adjustable dumbbells and a simple bench.

Keep this in your home and it takes very little space and is always accessible for those fat burning workouts you’d have to skip otherwise. A good fat burning workout can take as little as 15-20 minutes, but if you factor in the transit time to and from the gym, it can become more difficult to stick to your routine.

It’s highly recommended that you set up a workout station at home for those times, or you can even use this exclusively. You won’t have to wait for the next station or machine on your routine at home. This is very important in relation to pulling the maximum cardiovascular benefits out of the same muscle building and fat burning workout, keeping your time between exercises down to 1 minute.

Home workouts are also great for those that might be a bit intimidated by working out with weights in public at the gym. If you feel this way, you’re not alone. This is especially true for some of the ladies, as weight training is traditionally thought of as the guy’s territory in the fitness center. Nothing could be further from the truth, but if you’d rather perform your fat burning workouts at home, then do it!

Another excuse for skipping workouts is related to travel. For busy people, this is a reality. You go on business trips. You go on vacation. You go to visit out of town friends and family. Now, when working out properly you’re only exercising for 2-3 days per week, but if you’re workout day falls on a day when you’re out of town, what to do?

Yeah, you could try and find a local gym to go to, but that can be a hassle. There are actually several fat burning bodyweight exercises you can do without the use of any equipment.

Movements like the pushup, chin-ups, sit-ups, etc. can provide enough muscle stimulation to keep you conditioned until you get back home. You’re using your bodyweight as the resistance, rather than dumbbells, barbells, or machines.

So don’t let those standard excuses work their way into your vocabulary. You can get a great fat burning workout wherever you are, anytime!

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When searching for the right approach to weight training for fat loss, there are lots of misconceptions out there. Are you one of the many who believe they can “spot reduce”, burning fat off some problem areas at will? Are you still convinced that doing high reps with light weights is a good way to ‘tone’ one’s physique?

The truth is, if you want to build a lean and shapely physique and you’re using weight training to lose fat, you need to train at the same intensity level as any bodybuilder. This is true for men and women! Why? Well…

When using weight training to burn fat your focus should be, simply enough, on increasing your lean muscle mass. Muscle tissue is metabolically active – it causes your body to burn calories just to maintain itself. So when you have more muscle in your overall physical makeup, your metabolism increases.

In order to build the lean muscle needed to raise your metabolism, you need to stimulate muscle growth. You do this by regularly lifting weights that are just beyond the current capacity of the muscles. Simply put, you need to push yourself!

Keep your reps in the low to moderate range, and your weight moderate to high, if you’re weight training to lose fat. Most people are under the misconception that doing high reps with light weights will burn more fat. The truth is, this is complete nonsense.

If you are weight training to lose fat, low to moderate reps are far more effective. This provides a more significant growth stimulating effect and activates the fast twitch muscle fibers, which are by far the most responsive to increases in size and strength. What’s more, they ensure that you keep your set short, and this helps you keeps you focused.

When it comes to exercising the upper body, reps should be between 5 and 10, not lower, not higher. So, the weight you choose should be such that you can do at least 5, but no more than 10 reps, in proper form.

Since lower body muscles are typically more durable, they can handle as many as 25 reps while still yielding good results. Regardless, if you want to keep from injuring yourself, it’s best to do only 10 to 15 reps when performing more difficult body exercises such as lunges and squats; this is because these are technically more difficult to perform.

Stimulating muscle growth should be your primary focus when weight training to lose fat; to achieve this, you need to train hard in order to increase your weights each week. An important part of this is that you allow enough time between sets in order to rest your muscles. While the standard thinking is that one should rest for about 30 to 60 seconds between sets, this is not ideal as it doesn’t allow the muscles to fully rest.

Resting your muscles for as long as you need is important; this ensures that your next set is fully effective as you will be fully prepared and able to do it. A rest period can range from 2 to 5 minutes between sets, depending on the person.

You should always keep in mind that weight training to lose fat is not the same as cardio. Your goal isn’t to burn fat right then; it’s to stimulate muscle growth so as to speed up your metabolism, and to keep it elevated throughout the day. And the next! This will ensure that you lose fat all over your body, quickly and easily. Plus, more lean muscle means an athletic looking body.

Technorati Tags: body transformation system, burn fat, fat loss, get, lose fat, metabolism, muscle, Sean Nalewanyj, weight training

Back pain is a common problem faced by many of us in our daily lives. It interferes with the things we’d like to be doing, leads to handfuls of pain or anti-inflammatory pills, or sends us to the doctor for physical therapy or surgery. It can be caused, or worsened, by a wide variety of factors or activities like muscle tension and stress, forgetting to ‘lift with your legs’ or maintaining one position too long. Sitting or standing, for example.

The good news is that suffering from back pain doesn’t have to be a part of your daily routine. All you need to do is engage in a few easy exercises to loosen up and restore proper posture, and your back will be more supple in no time.

These three simple exercises should always be your first line of “therapy” when you feel a twinge of discomfort… and certainly long before you reach for the pain relievers or muscles relaxants. A few relaxed sets of each of these exercises can immediately make you feel better, and prevent a needless trip to the doctor.

These simple exercises are knee bends, waist twists and hip rolls. They are a great way to get the blood moving, release those feel-good endorphins, stretch the muscles, restore normal range of motion and help you detox those nasty toxins that cause pain and inflammation. These are the secrets to back pain relief — and prevention.

Since these simple exercises contract and extend the major muscle groups, including the core stabilizing muscles, you can do them anytime with varying degrees of difficulty. Simply adjust them as you get more accustomed to doing them.

Done regularly, these beneficial exercises will increase your health and fitness levels by promoting blood circulation and releasing muscle tightness and spasms, thus helping to tone your body. They will make you feel warmer and even help improve your digestive health as they assist the action of your intestines to move the bowels and aid in the detoxification process.

Detoxing is important when considering pain, as toxins (metabolic waste) in the blood and muscles creates inflammation and pain.

Let’s now look at how easy it is to do these three simple back pain relief exercises. Remember, go slooow and easy with these, especially if you’re already sore.

Exercise 1 — Hip Rolls:

Stand with legs at shoulder-width apart, tighten your abdominal muscles and put your hands on your hips. Imagine you have a hula hoop, or are doing the hula, and rotate your hips clockwise 5 times, then rotate them counter-clockwise 5 times. Be sure to relax and smile and breathe naturally with this exercise.

Exercise 2 — Waist Twists:

With your hands relaxed at your sides and with feet a shoulder-width apart, simply start swinging your arms right then left, patting both hands on your lower back as they reach around. This will massage the kidneys. Be sure not to swing or pat too hard, just in a relaxed easy motion! Breathe naturally and relax. Simply do a count of 10, and then relax. Then move onto the next exercise.

Exercise 3 — Knee Bends:

Do some gentle, relaxed knee bends. If you have knee or back issues it is best to do them with the assistance of a chair, table or desk.

Stand in a relaxed shoulder-width position and place your hands on the support. Tighten your stomach muscles and exhale while bending your knees and going down as far as you can without falling or straining your knees. Inhale while standing up. Do 10 of these to finish this quick exercise circuit.

The complete series of these three simple exercises only takes about two minutes to complete. Initially, try to do the exercises three times each day. You’ll be delighted by how good your low back will start to feel over time.

Technorati Tags: back pain, exercises, hip rolls, inflammation, knee bends, Mike Geary, range of motion, read, truth about abs, twists

When it comes down to it, making significant muscle gain can be quite difficult. If you really want to achieve insane muscle gain, it’s critical to test your personal limits. Not training hard enough is the major reason why most people never achieve the gains they’re after. The question is, why not? The reason is simple…It hurts. It’s not comfortable. It sends your body to it limits.

That said, muscle gains will only be achieved when you work through the pain that comes as a natural byproduct of an intense work out. With a little practice, you can learn to trick your mind to ignore those uncomfortable feelings and achieve the results you are fighting for. Check out the following suggestions and get ready for serious results!

Envision Life-Threatening Situations

Just when you think you can’t go any further, imagine someone you love is trapped under a heavy weight and it’s up to you to save them by lifting it. Or pretend you are hanging from a cliff during your pull-ups. During deadlifts you could imagine that you’re lifting a boulder off of someone.

The Magnetic Force

Use the force – envision the weights as magnets being pulled the opposite way. While bench pressing, envision the ceiling as a magnet pulling the bar or dumbbells toward it.

Envision Your Muscles

The purpose behind working out is to break down those muscle fibers to encourage your body to adapt and grow. To stay focused, imagine what’s happening to your muscles during the set. Visualize the way your muscle fibers are ripping and changing, filling with blood and nutrients to create the muscle growth you’re after.

Have Someone Watch You

This is not for the purpose of spotting; this is to have someone watch you and motivate you as you perform your set. You are more likely to push yourself while working out if you think you are being judged.

Positive/Negative Force

When it comes to pushing exercises, imagine pushing something or someone bad away from your body. It doesn’t matter what you choose to push away but imagine something you really don’t like, such as an emotion, an object or a person. When you do pulling exercises, visualize that you are pulling in something positive. Maybe it’s money, maybe someone you love or even a positive feeling.

Set Ridiculous Goals

If you need to do 8 reps, tell yourself that you’ll do 100. Truly convince yourself of this. When you start to lift, convince yourself you will not stop until you reach 100 reps. But, y’know…Do stop before 100!

Close Your Eyes

Only try this for the mechanically simple exercises that don’t require a spotter. For example, you’d never do this while deadlifting or squatting. On easy exercises, close your eyes. You won’t see anything that could distract you from executing a perfect set.

Pretend It’s Someone Else’s Pain

In order to produce insane muscle gain, you have to push yourself to muscular failure or at least very close to it every time you train. If you are about to approach muscular failure, imagine that your pain is being felt by someone that you don’t like. The more you push, the stronger the pain is that they receive. It might seem pretty harsh, but it gets the job done!

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What’s the most important thing you can do at the gym to ensure that your muscle building efforts DO consistently build more muscle? It’s very simple…

The most important thing you can do each and every time you go to the gym is to try to set a Personal Record on every lift you do. That’s it! What this means is that you should always be trying to either do a couple more reps with the same weight before you increase it, or more weight for the same number of reps.

The most basic “laws” of muscle building dictate that doing the same thing you did in a previous workout will do absolutely nothing to help you build muscle. The first time you apply a new stress to the body it will adapt by building itself up bigger and stronger. But when it faces that exact same stress again the next time, it will be prepared for it and thus will not adapt again. This is why you have to go up in either weight or reps and try to set a new PR.

Powerlifters and weightlifters continually try to set PR’s in contests. They also do this in training by testing their one rep maxes every few weeks or months. But setting PR’s does not have to be relegated to single lifts. You should try to set six rep PR’s, ten rep PR’s and twenty rep PR’s.

If you are really serious about building lean muscle, you always have to be improving. To do this, you have to keep detailed records of everything you do in a training journal and always look back at it so you have a goal to shoot for at every workout and on every set you do.

If you really want to build muscle fast, no set should ever be done without the goal of setting a PR. The only exceptions are prehab exercises (warm ups) and times when you are rehabbing from an injury. If you continually try to set PR’s on everything you do, it gives your workout a much greater purpose and meaning. Not only that but it’s a thousand times more fun than just mindlessly going through the motions trying to get a pump.

Suddenly your workout becomes something that has quantifiable results that can be measured each and every single time you set foot in the gym. What could be more motivating than that? Chasing PR’s also eliminates all the useless junk volume that most people end up doing after they have finished their main exercises.

Even if you start your muscle building workout with big exercises like chin ups and military presses and set new eight rep PR’s on those, it doesn’t mean that when you get to the little exercises at the end like hammer curls and pushdowns that you should forget the principle and just do whatever it takes to get a pump. On the contrary, you should still be trying to set a new eight, ten or twelve rep PR on all of those exercises as well.

If you want to really ramp up your muscle building results, start trying to set PR’s on every lift you do and get ready to be blown away by the results you achieve and how much more enjoyable your training will become.

Technorati Tags: build lean muscle, build muscle fast, get, Jason Ferruggia, muscle building, muscle gaining secrets, personal records, PR

Okay, you’ve got your nutrition plan and exercise schedule figured out, and now you want to know if the fat loss program you’re following is working. If you track your progress regularly, you’re more likely to keep your motivation high and stay aware of how you’re doing. Be sure the program is working by examining the following factors, in no specific order, to track the progress of your daily fat loss plan…

Changes in body weight

I’m including the bathroom scale on this list because it can be a helpful indicator, but it isn’t the best indication of how you’re progressing. As many panic-stricken “I’m working so hard, why aren’t I losing weight???” survivors can attest, if you’re dropping fat and gaining muscle then your weight will barely waiver.

But if you’re making only minimal increases in muscle, then you’ll see a difference on the scale as your body fat levels decrease. Of course this can also indicate muscle loss, water loss and other ‘non fat losses’ that aren’t desirable, which is why we’ll look at percentages later.

You want to keep things consistent when weighing yourself, so use the same scale for all your weigh-ins and make sure it’s “zeroed” each time. Next, weigh yourself at the same time each day. Your weight will fluctuate during the day, depending on what and how much you’ve eaten. Also, most of us are lighter first thing in the morning. The difference can be quite significant.

Changes in body fat percentage and lean muscle mass.

Presumably, your overall weight is not as important as how good you look and feel, your energy and endurance, etc. Body composition is a much better indicator of your progress than your weight alone would be.

Getting an accurate measurement of this is somewhat difficult. The “skin-fold measurements” method works for most people.

By measuring the thickness of skin/fat folds with a specifically designed caliper, the results are fairly accurate. Again, the key is consistency. You must measure the thickness the same way and in exactly the same places each time, then compare the readings. Take the measurements and plug it all into a formula to figure out your body fat percentage. Once you know that, you can calculate your lean mass.

Be aware, there are at least 100 different equations to choose from when doing this body fat percentage calculation!!! Some are done using calipers, some through other means. Every expert has a reason for choosing his/her favorite, and may choose different formulas for different people. Your best bet is probably to get a qualified pro to do your first measurement and take note of the equation used, before trying to test yourself at home.

Incidentally, “Qualified Pro” means someone who has done at least 50 measurements, according to certification standards. Also, the calipers made by “Accu-Measure” are considered by ‘insiders’ to be the only ones simple and accurate enough to be used by a novice (you and I) to do his or her own measurements.

Okay, once you’ve got that percentage worked out you can continue to the next step!

Lean mass is defined as any type of body weight that’s not fat, such as bone, water, or muscle. Multiple your weight in pounds by the body fat percentage you’ve finally found. This gives you your fat mass in pounds. Take that number and subtract it from your body weight, and you’ll know your lean body mass.

One example is a person with 20 percent body fat who weighs 180 pounds.

180 x .20 = 40, and 180 – 40 = 140

The formula tells us that he or she has 40 pounds of fat and 140 pounds of lean mass.

Measure yourself about once a week. Any more frequently than that, and you’ll risk getting obsessed. Any less frequently, and the numbers might not be as accurate.

Changes in body part measurements

Use a tape measure to measure fat loss in individual areas. Take measurements of your chest, waist, hips, upper arm and thigh. For a more detailed reading, feel free to include your forearm, calf and neck, but there won’t be a lot of change. The morning is the best time to measure, before you work out.

Changes in appearance

This is what we all really want, right? Let’s be honest, this is what we’re usually looking for. Stand in front of a mirror and you can see the changes. This isn’t exactly the most scientific method of progress-tracking, but you can visually see how well you’re dropping fat, and from where.

Take before/after pictures for another appearance tracking method. Small changes won’t be as easy to see visually when you check every day. Compare two pictures taken a few weeks or months apart though, and you’ll probably see a drastic difference.

If you track your fat loss progress with these five factors, it will give you a good indication of how you’re doing. You can make adjustments if necessary, to your caloric intake or exercise routines perhaps, and increase your motivation and sense of accomplishment.

Recommended Reading

Weight Loss Chart/Weight Loss Stats/Weight Loss Progress – Scroll down for a Printable Weight Loss Chart. This is where I will be keeping track of my weight loss progress. Being a visual person by nature, I like graphs and charts. Below is how I have been performing weight wise from week to week.

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