15 Tips for Staying on Track: #4 - Photos and Tape Measures!

As painful as it is to do, take photos of your progress. Please don’t shy away from it because otherwise you'll regret not having a record of all of your hard work. Take front, side and back photos, then date them and file them away...for now. Take photos every couple of weeks or every month. Then start to compare them.

When I took my photos, I was truly disgusted with what I saw but I put them away in a folder on my laptop (you may want to password-protect yours if your kids and/or partner are using the same machine). I took the next set of pics when I started running and exercising. And I filed them away. On May 19th, I glanced at myself in the mirror and thought I looked slimmer...so I took some more photos!

And then I compared that day to the others. I was shocked! And I cried!

I showed them to amato mio and he shed a tear too. I realise that sounds terribly gushy but I was overcome with such a mixture of emotions – mostly shame at letting myself get like that in the first place, but then joy and a sense of accomplishment. Amato mio overflowed with pride for me too!

I’m not taking any more photos now until I've got to ONEderland (199lbs) – shouldn't be too long now! I’m quite excited by the prospect. And by the way, those sweat pants I’m wearing in the photos now fall down when I walk!

Use your tape measure too - this is probably a more effective method of judging your progress. Why? Because as you start to burn fat and build a little muscle, you may not see much difference on your bathroom scales (and as we'll talk about later, scales can be misleading). While photos are a great visual aid, not everyone can see the difference in themselves, so a tape measure is another invaluable piece of kit....and unless you are going to pull it very tight, it's not going to lie to you.

You'll know your clothes feel looser but how about some concrete proof? What better to motivate you than tangible evidence of your success?

For those of you interested in numbers, here are my 'lost' inches. I am currently 25% of the way through my journey, and while getting slim is not my sole aim (I am actually far more interested in being healthy and fit again), being slimmer will be a very welcome bonus:

4" from my bust (this is fine - there's still plenty there!)
2" from my underbust
2.5" from my waist
2" from my hips
2" from each thigh
2.5" from each calf
1" from each wrist
1" from each forearm
3" from my right bicep
2.5" from my left bicep...

Making a grand total of 29" lost overall, to date! That's the height of the former World's Smallest Man, He Pingpin.

 (Photo: chinadaily.com.cn/Agency)

I think that's pretty impressive, don't you?!