Day Two: Motivation Through Numbers

Since the previous post, I have remained on track with my current goals. I avoided unhealthy fast food places and high calorie sodas. Due to the fact that I have an entire week to incorporate three 30 minute bouts of exercise I elected to take the day off from that and focus on something that could be a big source of motivation. That something would be numbers.

When starting your journey to a life of health and fitness, it is a good idea to take down some numbers in order to track how well you are doing. Weight is something people are familiar with but there are so many more bits of information you can gather about your current level of fitness. So many in fact, that I will only be mentioning a few at this point. In my opinion, the key is to choose the statistics that are relevant to your goals. For example, if you want to eventually run a half marathon, choosing modes of evaluation that gauge the efficiency of your cardiorespiratory system would probably be the way to go.

Examples of some of the things you can keep track of are:

• Weight - This is the easiest and most convenient statistic to keep track of if you are trying to slim down. Just know this is not always the most important statistic. 
• Body Fat Percentage - In acquiring weight loss, this is a better gauge of how you are doing but it is a more difficult number to calculate. If you know how to use skin fold calipers correctly, it can be the most accurate method. Bioelectrical impedance is the most convenient way to calculate this number but it is less accurate. Bioelectrical impedance is the technology used in some scales to calculate body fat percentage.  It can also be found in some hand-held instruments. There are other ways but they are not practical. 
• Blood Pressure - This is one way to assess the health of your cardiovascular system but be aware it is only part of the picture. It is not a means for diagnosing the overall health of your cardiovascular system.
  
• Resting Heart Rate (RHR) - Ideally you would take your heart rate as soon as you wake up, however, you can get a fairly accurate reading if you simply take it after sitting and relaxing for at least five minutes. Caffeine, alcohol, and exercise, among other things, can affect the accuracy of the reading. You can get this reading from a heart rate monitor, on some blood pressure machines, or by doing it yourself. 
• Heart Rate Under A Specific Load - With this, you would do a specific exercise for a specified period of time and take your heart rate at the conclusion. For example, you can jump on a treadmill for 5 minutes at 4mph and check your heart rate at the end. As your cardio improves, your measured heart rate should decrease. As long as you keep your program constant each time you do it, it can provide great insight. What I did was use a chair that I stepped up and down from for three minutes at a rate of 20 times (up and back down) per minute and took my heart rate when I was finished. There are standardized tests out there which give you the opportunity to compare your results to a sample population. If you fear that comparing yourself to others will be discouraging, then you may want to avoid these standardized tests. Just be careful in coming up with your own program. It should be at a moderate difficulty level and you will probably want to include a designated warm-up.  

As I said, there are a number of additional things that you can measure for the purposes of gauging progress. In future posts I will be covering some of these and feel free to comment on some of your own. Once again, these numbers can be really helpful and allow you to see tangible results which can help to keep you motivated. I hope this has been helpful.