No matter what your fitness goals are or what exercise program you are using, a simple wall calendar can be a great tool for reaching your weight loss or fitness goals. It works with weight lifting, walking, home fitness programs, dieting, and local gym workouts. Don’t underestimate the motivational power of a calendar.

The bathroom scale may not be the best motivational tool because it does not tell you how much fat has been replaced with muscle. The calendar will tell you that you are sticking with your program and throw a guilty feeling your way when you fail to complete your workouts.

It is important to vary your workouts and you can do this by setting up programs within a program. Your micro programs will give you a chance to add variations to your workout, and make your goals easier to acheive. you will find it beneficial to mark your progress as you work towards completing each step of your program. Put up a calendar near your workout area, or if you go out to exercise, try placing it near where you might keep your gym bag or running shoes.

For each segment of your workout, assign a specific number of days for its completion. Each of your workout segments should be marked on your calendar. If you have a 30 day workout stage, mark it out as day 1 through day 30 on your calendar. As you go through the segment, place a big X on the completed workout for that day.

This will help keep you motivated in a couple of ways. First, you will find that any days that you skip and are not marked with an X will bug the heck out of you and you will try harder to get each day’s workout completed. Second, it gives you a countdown, or visible progress report that shows you are getting closer each day to completing this stage and it is a good feeling.

Team Beachbody uses calendars in many of their more popular home DVD workout programs. With these programs you get a calendar that counts out a 60 day program or a 90 day program that is often broken down into 30 day segments, and you get instructions on which workout to complete for each day of the program.

As an Independent Team Beachbody Coach, I encourage you to hang in there with your program, whatever it may be, get healthy, and share your success to help motivate others to get healthy too!

Jim Ford is an Independent Team Beachbody Coach and offers his help to those seeking to improve their health. Visit his site for your fitness and weight loss help, or learn how you can become a coachand help others meet their goals too!