For lots of individuals who are starting a workout program to lose weight, the story is a lot like that old yarn about the kid who ordered some magic gizmo from a comic book: every day, that kid checked the mail, waiting for the magnificent toy to get there – for weeks, he kept trudging out to an empty mailbox, patiently waiting, until finally, the package arrived.  

Unfortunately, with weight loss training, it’s not as easy as checking the mailbox.  Also, your results have a lot to do with sustaining that excitement and energy that you feel at the beginning.  Just like the kid who is still excited about the package when it finally arrives months after the initial check gets sent out, those who get good weight loss results have to stay engaged and interested, rather than letting that energy and motivation fizzle out while waiting for “results”.

But the question persists, how long does it take to get “results”?  Obviously, it’s not going to be as dramatic as a package arriving in the mailbox – your body will change slowly over time.  That said, there are some estimates you can make about how soon those changes should occur.  However, there are also more than a few outside factors that can distort your training results in annoying ways.

A good training program should incorporate both cardiovascular activities and weight training.  You can get the best routine choices by consulting a personal trainer just to go over which activities will work fastest and how much you should do in each session.

Besides staying on track with your proposed training program, you’ll need to pay attention to your diet.  This is the biggest of these meddling outside factors; in order to best see results of training, you’ll need to not only eat healthy, but be consistent.  Otherwise, it gets really hard to spot the positives that happen when you work out.

A common way to help track progress is an activity and training notebook.  You can make notes of all of your training exercises as well as a detailed account of each trip to the scales.  This sometimes provides an even better picture of your training results than the one you get when you simply look in the mirror.  Sometimes, training that is technically producing results is hard to see, especially at first.  Your notebook can even include muscle measurements by diameter and other notations that help provide a picture of body changes over time.

Assuming you aren’t sinking your weight loss plan outside of the gym with inconsistent diet, there’s a basic time range where results should begin to be visible or measurable, and experts say that time range is between 8-12 weeks.  After 12 weeks, you can go back to your trainer or other expert and see if there are changes you could make.

So, in the end -does the miraculous decoder watch or power ring ever arrive?  Is it all it’s cracked up to be, or a disappointing gimmick?  And is the kid still excited, or does he just give up? With weight loss training, you provide the ending to the story.  Your stamina and willpower have everything to do with whether you will “see” those results.  But, sticking with the program and being persistent can add up to some very visible weight loss – it might take more than a couple of months, and it might take some trial and error, but in the vast majority of cases, determination will pay off.