The Tribune

Health coach Ethan Quant, of Elite Wellness Solutions, has succeeded in his weight loss journey and now wants to share his methods with the Bahamas in an effort to foster a culture of wellness and conquer the obesity epidemic.

I know that we have all heard it before: track and monitor our progress as it relates to our goals. But let’s be honest, what does that even mean. Why should we do it and how do we know the best way to do it?

Well, when say track and monitor your progress in this context, I mean the progress towards the goals you set for yourself. Tracking is simply making a note of the steps and activities that you are taking towards specific goals. Monitoring is keeping yourself updated on the progress or lack thereof. This is important because when you are constantly tracking and monitoring your progress you can make adjustments as needed if things are not working and you are constantly veering off track.

Another good reason to track and monitor is because you are able to spot patterns in your behaviour. When you look back at the data from the past week or past month you can see patterns of where you “fell off” and when you “stayed on” your programme. This is extremely helpful because then you can you can move to a more proactive approach.

I often get asked how often you should track your progress. The truth is that it all depends on you. You know yourself. For me there are certain things that I track daily because I like the data so that I can make adjustments to my daily routine if I find myself behind on my targets. Some things I track weekly, and others I track monthly.

Personally, things that I track daily are things like my weight (I know there are tons of people who advise against this), how many meals I have, and my training. Things that I track weekly are my weight (I actually have a total goal that I breakdown into months weeks and days), my aesthetics (I take a progress picture once a week), and my fitness levels. There are certain exercises that I do which I use to see if I am getting more fit, for example box jumps. I hate them but I do them at least once a week to see if my fitness level is higher. I also look at my average pace in the mile from week to week to see if I am getting faster.

Something I recently started doing was a daily video diary, so every day I record a short video talking about my experiences, my goals, my wins, my losses, things like that. It’s a conversation with my “accountability partners”, my imaginary ones. I haven’t actually shared the videos nor have I gone back to see what I said in them. However, they do let me be honest and vulnerable in the moment. I think it will be good to watch them later.

Now, how you track whatever it is that you track is also entirely up to you. I do suggest that you make it easy enough so that you can be consistent with whatever it is. You want it to become a part of your regular routine. So if it’s daily, you want to make it easy enough so that you can do it every day without fail. A good way to do this is to put it behind something that you already do every day. So for me I wake up and use the bathroom every morning. So after I do that is when I weigh. I shoot my video before I sit down at my desk to start working. Whatever you decide to do just make sure it makes sense to you and fits into your routine.

I hope this helps you, because I know that tracking and monitoring helps me stay on track with my health wellness, fitness and life goals. Remember, if you want help navigating this or any other aspect of your health wellness and fitness journeys feel free to reach out to me directly. Also, if there is anything in particular that you want me to speak on let me know that as well.

• You can contact Ethan Quant at ethan@elite-wellnesssolutions.com or on Instagram at @ethanquant.