http://www.fitocracy.com/knowledge/why-weight-loss-is-not-the-king-of-achievements/
I found this posted by a friend on Facebook. Female-oriented, since women seem to be more concerned about the scale than men, but virtually the same arguments apply to males. Those pictures show fairly dramatically that scale weight, and fitness and attractiveness are not necessarily related at all.
I’ll steal a phrase from elsewhere: “How do you look, feel, and perform?” Those three criteria are way more important than what the scale says.
Pictures are easier to view objectively than your own reflection. If looks motivate you, take weekly snapshots; ideally in the same location, lighting, etc. I’m a dude, but I still found it motivating to buy new (expensive) jeans when I got down to within an inch of my high school waist size, so clothes can be a motivation too. Get rid of your old fat clothes; i.e. burn your ships behind you. Buy some selected new stuff, repeat as needed or as budget allows.
If moods and hunger are important to you, keep a food-mood diary. Note how you feel. Keep to a rigorous update schedule until it becomes habit, and it probably won’t even feel like work after that, it’ll just become part of your meal routine. It’ll also help you find if some foods, circumstances, workouts, etc. affect your moods. Apparently this has helped some people find patterns like mood crashes or gastrointestinal fallout following the consumption of certain foods, and other oddities in mood, motivation, or physical responses related to food.
Everyone should keep a workout log. If nothing else, it helps you know what you should be doing this workout based on what you did last time. You should make subjective note too, like if the weight felt horrendous but you were able to lift it, or if you had tight shoulders, or if you felt like puking after the last sprint, stuff like that. I find it pretty motivating to look back at stuff I did a year ago and think, “wow, that would be a moderate workout instead of an asskicker now,” or, “crap, I need to do more met-con/running since I’m two minutes down from my 5k time 6 months ago.”
Of these three, I still regularly maintain a workout log. I found pictures motivating when first losing weight, but don’t care much anymore about appearance; I’m more focused on performance and how I feel during and after a workout. I also don’t have food fixations, so I don’t need to keep food logs most of the time. I still do occasional spot checks to see more objectively what I’m eating. I’ll do like a 3-day or 1-week diary and do a basic nutrient/calorie breakdown. I realize different people have different motivations, though, which is why I made some suggestions addressing each of the look/feel/perform points.
