​To achieve any goal, you need to collect and analyse data.
 
Without it, you wouldn’t know
 

• If you’re making progress
• The rate at which you’re progressing
• What is working
• What is not working

 
In other words, without data, you can’t make the right adjustments to your plan.
 
You could still accomplish your goal, but you’d probably run into one of these two scenarios:
 

1. You can’t maintain the achieved results because you made excessively drastic decisions that you can’t sustain in the long term
2. You take an unnecessarily long time to reach your target because your decisions were too conservative

 
However, having data isn’t enough to secure effective and efficient results. Inconsistent and unreliable data, or data that you’re interpreting incorrectly, can be just as damaging as the absence of it.
 
For example, with fitness goals such as fat loss and muscle gain, a common mistake is to focus too much on day-to-day fluctuations on the scale, which are normal, and too little on your average weight increases or reductions over a longer period of time, which is what matters most for these fitness endeavours.
 
This multi-part article series will provide you with the knowledge to assess your bodyweight data in order to achieve fat loss or muscle gain.
 
In Part 1, we’ll delve into:
 

• Why you need to weigh yourself
• How to weigh yourself to get consistent and reliable data
• How to record and assess this data

 
In the rest of the series, we’ll cover how to adjust your diet and training protocol in response to changes in bodyweight.

Reflecting on the past two years of coaching people online and in person, I created a list of the advice that my clients have found most helpful in the pursuit of their goals, but that seems to be underrated in an online fitness space rife with detox teas and abs-blasting workouts.
 
This article breaks down these tips into the following categories:
 

1. Nutrition
2. Training
3. Habits
4. Mindset

​Training and dieting plateaus are normal to an extent, but they can cripple your results if they are too frequent.
 
Being able to assess your training in an objective manner and to identify why you’ve plateaued, is going to be essential to chart a path out of your current funk and to create a preventative strategy for the future.
 
This article breaks down the following common reasons for a plateau and the troubleshooting approach to each one:

1. The structure of your current program
2. Too much variety
3. Not enough variety

 
Start with the reason that seems most likely, apply the suggestions for that alone, then wait at least four to six weeks before re-evaluating whether you’re still “stuck”.

Why not try all of these solutions at once?
 
Though it might seem slower to produce results, this trial-and-error approach is the most effective in the long run. Altering too many variables at once will make it challenging, if not impossible, to figure out which change was the most helpful.
 
Now, let’s tackle the first reason:

95% of diets fail, so diets don’t work.
 
… Or do they?
 
If you take a look at the scientific literature, there’s actually plenty of evidence to the contrary. For example, we know that diets inducing a caloric deficit are effective for fat loss regardless of whether they’re high in fats, carbohydrates, or protein.
 
In other words, any diet can work as long as it involves a caloric deficit.
 
The real problem is maintaining the resulting weight loss.
 
For instance, a review of nearly 30 long-term studies on weight loss and maintenance in the American population showed that more than half of the weight lost was regained within two years, and 80% was regained within five.
 
For this reason, experts consider maintenance of 5 to 10% of your weight loss “a great achievement”.
 
But why is it so hard not to put weight back on?
 
When a new client signs up for online coaching to lose fat, what often stands out to me is their mindset: In their experience, a diet is a short-term, excruciating “eat chicken breast and a green leaf for every meal” endeavour, not an attempt to change their lifestyle for the better in the long run.
 
After a few weeks or months of this torture, they go back to the same way they were eating before, regain weight, start another diet, and so on.
 
This vicious cycle is unfortunately common because most diets give you rules to stick to, whether you like them or not, instead of habits that you can incorporate into your long-term lifestyle.
 
This article is perfect if you haven’t had much luck maintaining fat loss after your previous diets, because it does exactly what those diets didn’t do: It teaches you five habits you need to have in place not only to lose fat, but to keep it off, too.
 
If you’ve been spinning your wheels with countless diets for as long as you can remember, you don’t want to miss this one.

A deload is a crucial part of a resistance training program… but also the least sexy.
 
Who wants to be told to take a break from hardcore training?
 
But hear me out: You don’t grow when you’re smashing the weights in the gym. In that session, you’re actually doing the opposite, creating a lot of stress to challenge your body to become fitter.
 
It’s when you’re resting, in the hours and days following each session, that your body grows bigger and stronger in order to handle that training stress better in the future.
 
So recovery is the Super Soldier Serum that transforms you into Captain America.
 
However, when you’ve been training hard for a few weeks, just taking one or two rest days may not be enough to restore your body.
 
That’s when a deload comes in.
 
It’s the quick pit stop you make to propel yourself forward. Without it, sooner or later your car will slow down, or you might even lose a tyre. 
 
Now, if you’re ready to boost your training, this article will cover:
 

• What a deload is
• The purpose of deloading
• Different types of deload
• When and how to use one

 
Time for some brain gains.