Sound about right? Nothing defines a muscle. Nothing sculpts a muscle. Nothing makes a muscle ripped or cut or slim or lean or any other silly adjective that essentially means the same damn thing.

What Is Muscle Tone? Get Your Perfect Workout It takes less than 60 seconds… Take The Quiz. Need Help With Your Diet And Workout? Don't waste another minute of your time searching for what to do. I've already done the research for you and created step-by-step plans that work. Select your goal below I Want To Build Muscle If you want to build lean muscle without gaining excess body fat, spending all of your time in the gym, using a diet or workout that isn't customized to you, or doing myth-based nonsense that only works for people with amazing genetics, check out: Superior Muscle Growth I Want To Lose Fat If you want to lose body fat without losing muscle, feeling hungry all the time, using stupid restrictive diets, doing hours of cardio, or struggling with plateaus, metabolic slowdown, and everything else that sucks about getting lean, check out: Superior Fat Loss.

Get Your Perfect Workout It takes less than 60 seconds Take The Quiz. There are many other ways to gauge your progress. Read on to learn how long it takes to see results from working out and signs that you are getting fitter. It might take as long as three to four months to see significant results in cardio, muscle, and weight loss, depending on your goals and how fit you are.

Cardio helps improve aerobic capacity, or the maximum amount of oxygen that's available during exercise. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention CDC advises minutes of cardio per week, or 30 minutes per day, five days per week. Resistance training can help build muscle mass and strength.

You will likely make gains in strength more quickly than others if you are just starting out with exercise. The CDC advises resistance training two days per week. A study published in reported that some people will see improvements in aerobic capacity and muscle gains in just two to four weeks.

In contrast, researchers noted that your genetics, muscle fiber makeup, and the quality of your workouts affect your strength if you are well-conditioned. You might see improvements within eight to 12 weeks in that case. How long it takes to lose weight from working out depends on how often you exercise and your diet.

You must burn more calories than you consume to lose weight. Research has shown that doing more than the minimum recommended minutes per week is essential for weight loss.

The participants performed seven to eight hours of endurance exercise weekly. Physical activity helps support brain health and might prevent neurological diseases.

Research has shown that many structural and chemical changes happen in the brain when you exercise. There's an increase in the volume of gray matter in your brain increases when you exercise. Gray matter is tissue in your brain that helps control your emotions, memory, and movements.

With exercise also comes chemical changes that increase blood flow to your brain. Regular physical activity also allows for more glucose sugar to enter, helping improve cognitive function.

Glucose is your brain's primary source of energy. Increased energy helps improve your focus and memory and prevents cognitive decline with age. Research has shown that exercise generally helps you get a better night's rest. There are mixed results regarding the type and timing of exercise.

A review published in found that any type of exercise, from aerobic exercise to resistance training to tai chi and yoga, improves sleep quality. Try using a sleep tracker device for a few weeks to measure your sleep quality. A sleep tracker can tell you how long it takes you to drift off and how long you spend in rapid-eye movement REM sleep.

REM sleep is the deepest stage of sleep, which is necessary to feel well-rested. Keep in mind that exercising too close to bedtime might keep you up at night. Try scheduling your workout so that you are done at least three hours before your bedtime.

Aerobic exercise strengthens your heart and lungs. Look at your resting heart rate RHR and heart rate recovery HRR to tell if your heart and lungs are getting stronger.

Your heart typically does not need to work as hard as rest, so a normal RHR is 60 to beats per minute bpm. Your HRR is your peak heart rate during exercise minus your heart rate after you cool down. People in better cardiovascular condition have lower heart rates during exercise.

Their heart rates come down more quickly to their RHR than others. As your heart gets stronger, it can pump more blood out with each contraction, meaning it does not have to beat as quickly. Your body shape may change due to losing fat and gaining muscle as your fitness improves.

Focus on how your clothing feels instead of what the number says on the scale. Just keep in mind that clothing sizes often vary between brands. Your pants may get looser in some areas, but you might fill them out in others.

You might be losing fat in your abdominal area if your pants loosen up around your waist. Research has linked high amounts of abdominal fat have been correlated with higher disease risk. In a study published in , researchers found that exercise helps reduce both abdominal fat and waist circumference.

The authors also noted that boosting either the amount or intensity of exercise can increase the amount of abdominal fat you burn. Research has shown that regular physical activity can result in improved mental health outcomes.

In a review published in , researchers found that exercise protects against anxiety and depression. The authors noted that those benefits were dose-dependent, meaning they increased with more exercise. Deciding to work toward something, make changes, and commit to them is no easy feat.

That breaks down to roughly two to four weeks for beginners and four to six weeks or more for more seasoned athletes, he adds. Even if weight loss is your goal, the number on the scale is certainly not the only meaningful metric to measure against your progress. Not to mention, the benefits of fitness and staying active go far beyond just your weight or how you look.

It's important to continually build on progress to strengthen and stimulate these neural pathways. Just as microtears in your muscles caused by strength training help the body to repair, grow, and come back stronger, there's a similar process for your energy levels. Exerting yourself during a workout might make you feel taxed during a session, but this challenge actually signals to your body to produce more mitochondria, the energy stars of your cells, according to Harvard Health.

Also, thanks to the release of feel-good hormones like endorphins during exercise, your new fitness routine can also give you a mood boost. Physical activity of all kinds releases endorphins, but research is still evolving as to what type of training or workout intensity gives you the biggest endorphin rush.

Another big result you'll likely notice fairly early after beginning a new fitness routine or training program is better sleep. Don't underestimate this as a key factor to your overall health.

Adequate rest can be a crucial factor for maintaining motivation for training both in the short and long term, according to one small study. For those looking for results from strength training, you could track progress against absolute strength. This is often measured by the one-rep max 1RM test —the heaviest weight you can lift in a single exercise, such as a bench press or a barbell squat, for one rep at the full range of motion and with proper form.

If you're newer to strength training, we suggest you test for a three to five rep total, then use a training load chart for a one rep max rather than going all-out for a single rep.

You could also look at your progress in relative strength, which takes your body into account, looking at how much you can lift compared to your body weight, says Ellis.

Simply divide the weight lifted by your body weight to find this measure.