No matter what your fitness goals are or what exercise program you might be using, a basic wall calendar could be a beneficial tool for attaining your weight loss or fitness goals. It works with weight lifting, walking, home fitness plans, dieting, and neighborhood gym workouts. Don't underestimate the motivational power of a calendar.

The calendar can give you a quick visual report of your progress and keep you on track. It may make you feel guilty when you miss your work out, and make you feel proud when you see it fill up with marked completions. The weight scale can be slow to report and may produce varied results throughout the day due to natural fluctuations in weight.

Be sure your work outs are set up in stages. You should already know that performing the exact same movements over and over again will not be the most beneficial way to get success. Take that a step further and put up a calendar near your exercise area, or if you go out to exercise, try putting it close to where you might keep your gym bag or running shoes.

For each phase in your training, assign a certain number of days for that stage. Each of your workout stages should be marked on your calendar. If you have a 60 day training stage, mark it out as day 1 through day 60, and put a short notation of what your exercise for each day will be. As you progress through the stage, place a big X on the completed workout day!

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

A number of the better known home fitness packages offered by Team Beachbody make use of this type of calendar countdown in a number of of their successful programs. With these programs you get a calendar that counts out a 60 day program or a 90 day program or whatever the case may be, and you receive instructions on which workout to perform each day.

Hang in there with your program, whatever it may be, get healthy, and share your achievements to help motivate others to get healthy as well!