Habit Tracking for Fitness: What Should You Actually Monitor?
When most people decide they want to "get fit," the first thing they do is step on a scale. Then, they start tracking every single calorie, weighing their food to the microgram, and monitoring their exact body fat percentage every morning.
I’ve tried that route. It is utterly exhausting, and for most people, it just leads to burnout after three weeks.
If you want to actually build long-term fitness habits, you need to stop tracking outcomes (like weight) and start tracking inputs (the daily actions that lead to the weight).
Here is what you should actually be monitoring on your habit tracker:
1. "Did I move for 20 minutes?"
Don't track "Did I do an intense 90-minute CrossFit workout?" Track a baseline. Some days your 20 minutes will be a heavy lifting session. Other days, you might feel awful, and your 20 minutes is just a slow walk around the block. Both count. You are just tracking the habit of showing up.
2. "Did I drink X amount of water?"
This is the easiest fitness habit to track, and it gives you the fastest physical results in terms of energy levels and recovery. Set an interval habit to remind yourself.
3. "Did I eat one serving of protein/vegetables with dinner?"
Instead of obsessively logging every calorie on MyFitnessPal, track a single, high-leverage nutritional habit. It is vastly less stressful and incredibly effective over a year.
4. "Did I stretch/recover?"
Fitness isn't just about destroying your muscles; it's about recovering. Track a 5-minute stretching routine before bed.
Track It Without the Bloat
When it comes to fitness tracking, the last thing you want to do while you're sweaty and tired at the gym is navigate a complex, bloated app.That’s why I use my own app, HabLoop. I designed it to be ultra-minimalist and fast. You can set up your fitness habits as a "Workout Stack" so they are grouped together. You can even drop a HabLoop widget on your Android home screen so you can literally just tap "Completed Workout" as you're walking out of the gym doors, without even opening the app.
Focus on the simple inputs, and the results will take care of themselves.
Android download: HabLoop on Google Play
Website: habloop.appzyra.com
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