Track, Compare, Succeed -
Monitoring Your Exercise Program for Long-Term Success
By Jeremy Gentles, MA, CSCS
Perhaps the most important aspect of an exercise program is adherence. Even though regular physical activity is one of best predictors of long-term success after weight loss surgery, adhering to an exercise program or simply living an active lifestyle is often a struggle for many. There are numerous factors that contribute to poor exercise adherence including improper goal setting, misinformation and bad past experiences to name a few. With this said, one aspect of an exercise program that is often overlooked is that tracking or monitoring your exercise program can increase the chances of adherence significantly. For some, a pen and paper is sufficient to track their program while others may need or prefer the ease of use and instantaneous feedback you can receive using a web based application like ObesityHelp?s Exercise Tracker.
There are a number of reasons why tracking and monitoring an exercise program increases adherence. First, similar to having an exercise partner or setting up reminders, tracking your exercise program simply helps to remain accountable. Second, a visual representation of your progress over time can be a powerful motivator. Third, engaging in regular exercise or physical activity is about more than just changing body weight. Success with exercise comes in a variety of forms that should not be overlooked and the only way to really gauge how exercise is impacting your life is to track and monitor your exercise program. It is unfortunate that many of the other benefits associated with exercise go unnoticed, underappreciated or ignored all together
For a moment, think of exercise as you would medication. Exercise is dose and type dependent which has a number of implications.
Dose: The amount or ?dose? of exercise that you participate in has a direct impact on the results associated with exercise. Low to moderate amounts of exercise or general physical activity can have a dramatic impact on health. Higher levels of exercise can certainly cause further health benefits but your level of fitness for various activities (which can be different than health) also increases. There are also cases where exercise is excessive and can have a negative impact on health (but this is not generally the case ;). It is important to be able to associate total time or volume of exercise to other variables that can really define long-term success. While we will address some of these other variables shortly, a good example of this would be the relationship between endurance activity and strength. Weight loss surgery obviously restricts caloric intake significantly. As a result of caloric restriction, individuals lose muscle tissue and often strength. Too much endurance or cardiovascular exercise can actually increase strength losses. Does this mean that you should not perform cardiovascular training after weight loss surgery? Of course not. Regular cardiovascular exercise is a key component to cardiovascular health. However, if you track and monitor your exercise program, you can find that balance of cardiovascular exercise and strength training that will help you maintain or build as much strength as possible.
Type: Simply put, if you exercise a particular way, that is what you are going to get better at. If you frequently perform cardiovascular or endurance training, your cardiovascular endurance will improve but your strength may not be influenced. If you strength train on a regular basis, strength will be the primary improvement made. If you exercise in a variety of ways, you will make improvements in a number of different areas.
So what are these other variables of long-term success?
If you have read any of my articles in the past, a theme that I commonly touch on is the importance of identifying measures of success other than weight loss when it comes to exercise. I always ask the following question when I speak at any of our events. Have you ever been frustrated with the results of an exercise program? Nearly everyone always raises a hand. When asked why, the most common response is, ?I just didn?t lose the weight I was expecting.?
Averting ?exercise failure? is often as simple as focusing on measurable benefits that may not have anything to do with weight loss. What are those measurable benefits? Let?s take a look.
? Blood Pressure ? Exercise, both cardiovascular and strength training, can have a dramatic impact on blood pressure. One aspect of weight loss that is frequently ignored is that while losing weight can reduce blood pressure and one?s overall risk of developing cardiovascular disease, a lack of physical activity is one of the most significant risk factors for developing cardiovascular disease. So, even for those individuals who have a healthy BMI, being sedentary significantly increases the risk of developing cardiovascular disease. If blood pressure is measured on a regular basis and exercise is frequently recorded, this allows you to see how exercise impacts your blood pressure over time.
? Resting Heart Rate ? Resting heart rate, while certainly not the only measure of fitness, is one component of cardiovascular fitness. The average resting heart rate is around 60-65 beats per minute. As your level of cardiovascular fitness increases, your resting heart rate decreases. Resting heart is a simple measure that you can monitor and compare to your exercise program.
? Strength ? After weight loss surgery and/or during periods of significant caloric restriction, you will lose muscle tissue. However, it is possible to actually gain strength while losing muscle tissue if you strength or resistance train on a regular basis. Tracking your exercise program, as mentioned previously, will help you find the right balance of strength training and cardiovascular exercise to preserve or gain strength.
? Endurance ? Increasing cardiovascular endurance often involves exercising in a particular heart rate range. Monitoring your cardiovascular or endurance training, the average heart rate attained during the sessions and your ability to maintain that heart rate or intensity during exercise, will provide you with the necessary information to make informed decisions about the best heart rate range for you to train at in order to increase cardiovascular endurance.
? Body Composition ? Strength and cardiovascular training will impact your body composition (example, body fat %) in different ways. Monitoring your body composition or body fat % in conjunction with tracking your exercise program, will help you find the right balance and volume of exercise to achieve a healthy body fat %.
? Circumference Measurements ? Beyond just your waist size, strength or resistance training in particular allows you to impact a variety of circumference measurements to include arms, chest, legs, etc. Monitoring your exercise program will provide you with a clear picture of how exercise is impacting your circumference measures.
If you are struggling to find success in your exercise program, you may just be looking in the wrong place. This is in no way an exhaustive list of the benefits associated with exercise but these variables, when monitored in conjunction with tracking your exercise program, provide a set of values upon which you can measure your long-term success.
Selecting an Exercise Tracker
When tracking and monitoring your exercise program, you will quickly learn that there is quite a bit of information to manage. Managing the data that you collect over weeks, months or years and making any kind of sense out of it, is as important as tracking your exercise program to begin with. If you have ever used pen and paper to track your exercise program, you can attest to the fact that managing the information can quickly become overwhelming. For this reason, there are a number of web based and computer options to assist you in tracking and monitoring an exercise program. When selecting a method to track and monitor your exercise program with, you may want to consider the following:
? Variety & Choice - Many of the most popular web based or computer based options for tracking exercise only allow you to track general activities such as running, walking, gardening and other daily or work related activities. If you perform specific strength training exercises such as sit-ups, bench presses, squat, lunges or numerous other strength training exercises, you are out of luck. Select an exercise tracker that meets all of you needs.
? Details ? There is more to walking, running and cycling than time and distance. Make sure that you have the ability to track more advanced details such as average heart rate or average grade. (Example: treadmill inclines). Being able to leave notes for each exercise can also be extremely helpful. You want to make sure that system you choose will be able to accommodate your needs the longer you use it. When you start an exercise program for the first time you may only interested in the basics but as your level of fitness increases, the details you want to track in relation to your exercise program may also increase.
? Caloric balance ? Caloric intake, calories burned from resting metabolic rate and calories burned through activity all play a part in achieving caloric balance. Be sure to choose a system that allows you to monitor all of these factors.
? Ease of use ? Do you have to click through several pages to log a single exercise? Is the process of recording your exercise program extremely time consuming? You want your tracking experience to be pleasant to ensure long term adherence.
? Cost ? Is it free or does it cost something? Perhaps part of the application is free but additional functionality requires a paid subscription.
This sounds a bit too complicated
Ok, so all of this tracking and monitoring sounds complicated and time consuming! Don?t confuse the amount of information you can attain from tracking your exercise program with the amount of time that it actually requires to track your exercise program. A well designed application or system for tracking exercise should allow you to record your exercises quickly and easily while simultaneously provide access to a variety of comparisons and reports.
Over the course of the last several months, we have been working extremely hard on Health Tracker which is a new feature here at ObesityHelp. We feel that we have developed something that not only rivals other systems such FitDay, DailyPlate or Nutrimirror to name a few, but really runs circles around most other applications when you consider the combination of robust features and ease of use. For those who do a couple of activities each day such as walking and stretching or running and stretching, it should literally take under a minute to log your activity each day using ObesityHelp?s Exercise Tracker. If you perform a series of strength training exercises, some cardio and some stretching, it may take you 2-3 minutes each day to log your exercise using ObesityHelp?s Exercise Tracker. If you are more interested in tracking your food, we have that too!
If you don?t know where you have been, it is difficult to know where you are going. While this statement applies to a number of different situations, it also holds true for health and fitness. After weight loss surgery, the impact of exercise on body weight, body composition and other variables may not be as clear cut as one might expect. To give you a true picture of how exercise and regular physical activity impacts your life, you must track and quantify your level of activity. If you have not already used our Fitness Tracker, give it try and while you are there, check out the other features offered free through Health Tracker such as the Body Tracker, Nutrition Tracker, Tickers & Widgets and Reports.
