Congratulations, you’ve created a workout plan and managed to stick with it for 6 whole weeks. But instead of celebrating, you’re starting to get concerned and a little discouraged. Why? Well you haven’t started seeing any results yet. All your old clothes still fit and while you can now run a full mile without stopping, you’re still feeling a little winded after walking up a flight of steps. What gives?!
Scenarios like the one above are the norm for many people. Once the decision is made to get fit and actually stick to it, most of us expect to see results somewhat immediately. We have a vision in our heads of what weight loss looks like and when we don’t see it when we think we should, we tend to get a bit discouraged.
I remember working out 3 days a week for 3 months with a personal trainer and after about a month of some of the most grueling workouts ever (ok not really, but they were hard!) I expected for my clothes to be falling off and when they didn’t, I hit the ice cream hard believing that the sacrifice just wasn’t worth it. What I didn’t realize, and what my trainer explained to me, was that I actually had lost a few inches in certain areas and had gained a bit of muscle.
These were results I hadn’t kept in mind as I fanaticized about my new wardrobe. On the flipside, I had a friend who simply went to the gym 3 days a week sans trainer and lost a small child in about 6 weeks! For her the pounds kept melting off, while all I had to praise were inches. However, somewhere around month two I did start to notice the difference in my clothing and while I had more than a child to lose, my confidence in the plan started to kick back in.
Looking back on that situation makes me wonder exactly when are you supposed to start seeing results? Is there a time in the process that you should expect to lose inches, another point when you should expect to lose weight, another when you should expect to see definition, etc? Or are we just doomed to suffer through the wait and see method.
Instead of worrying why your results aren’t like Suzie’s down the street, I guess the main thing to remember is that everyone’s body is different and the results of working out unfortunately aren’t one size fits all. Just because your results journey may be different from the next person’s doesn’t mean that results aren’t there. If you stick with the program, your body will reveal to you the results of your hard work in its own time and what you see might surprise you. So whether you start seeing results in 6 days, 6 weeks, or 6 months, keep pushing and know that it will all pay off.
When do you start seeing results? How long does it take? Does not seeing results right away discourage you?