How to Take Progress Photos That Actually Show Change

Knowing how to take progress photos mostly means knowing how to keep the conditions the same between shots, because that's where they usually fail. A different lamp, a phone held a little lower, a pair of shorts that sits higher on the hip, and two photos taken a month apart can look like a different person, or like nothing happened at all.

The fix is boring and it works. Pick one setup, write it down, and repeat it exactly. Photos then sit alongside your weigh-ins, which are best read as a trend rather than daily numbers; you can calculate your trend weight from a few weeks of them.

Where should you take progress photos?

Choose a spot you can return to every time, with a plain wall behind you and enough floor space to stand 6 to 8 feet (about 2 meters) from the camera. A bedroom wall or a hallway is usually better than a bathroom mirror, which forces you to hold the phone and puts it in the shot.

Three details help more than you'd expect:

• Background. A plain, light wall with nothing on it. Door frames and furniture are fine as long as they stay put, and they can even help you line photos up later.
• Floor mark. Put a small piece of tape where your toes go. Put another where the phone or tripod stands. This is the single cheapest way to keep distance constant.
• Skip the mirror. In a mirror selfie your arm covers part of your torso, the image is reversed, and the angle shifts a little every time.

What lighting works best?

Use even, front-facing light, and use the same light every time. Daylight from a window facing you is ideal if you always shoot at the same time of day. If your schedule moves around, use an overhead room light with the curtains closed instead, because it won't change with the weather or the season.

Avoid light from directly above or from one side. Overhead spotlights carve shadows under the ribs and stomach, and side light exaggerates every curve. Both can make a photo look dramatically "better" or "worse" with no change in your body. Turn the flash off.

How high and how far away should the camera be?

Put the camera at about chest or navel height, level, 6 to 8 feet away, so your whole body fits with a little space above your head and below your feet. A phone held low and tilted up makes legs look longer and the torso shorter. Held high and tilted down, it does the opposite.

You don't need special equipment. A cheap phone tripod works, and so does a stack of books on a chair. Use the Camera app's built-in timer (3 or 10 seconds) so you can step into position, and keep the zoom at 1x. Zooming changes perspective, and switching lenses between sessions makes photos hard to compare.

What should you wear?

Wear something fitted that shows your outline, and wear the same thing every time. Underwear, a swimsuit, or fitted shorts with a sports bra or no top all work. The point is to see where your waistband sits, how your shoulders and hips look, and how your outline changes from the side.

Keep the waistband at the same height on your body. A pair of shorts pulled up an inch can hide or create a visible change around the stomach.

Which poses should you use?

Take three relaxed shots each session: front, side and back. Stand naturally, feet about hip-width apart, arms slightly away from your body so your waist outline is visible.

Relaxed is the reference. People often suck in their stomach or flex without meaning to, which is why it helps to breathe out normally before the timer fires. If you want flexed shots too, take them after the relaxed set and treat them as extras.

When and how often should you take them?

Take them first thing in the morning, after using the bathroom and before eating or drinking much. That's when you're least affected by the day's food and fluids. Shoot on the same day of the week, too. In one study of 80 adults who weighed themselves daily, weight tended to be higher on Sunday and Monday and dropped through the week, so a Monday photo may look a little fuller than a Thursday one.

Every 2 to 4 weeks is a sensible rhythm. Fat loss is slow, and day-to-day differences in water make photos taken a few days apart look random. A salty dinner or a high-carb day can leave you looking fuller the next morning: stored carbohydrate (glycogen) holds roughly three to four parts water. If you have a menstrual cycle, bloating tends to peak around the first day of your period, so comparing photos from the same point in your cycle gives a fairer picture.

Common progress photo mistakes

If a comparison looks wrong, it's usually one of these.

Where should you keep progress photos?

Decide this before you take the first one, because progress photos are among the most private pictures on your phone. On iPhone, anything taken with the Camera app goes into your Photos library. If iCloud Photos is turned on, Apple keeps every photo and video in iCloud and shows it on your other devices signed into the same Apple Account. Google Photos and other backup apps do something similar if you've enabled them. That's useful for holiday pictures; you may feel differently about underwear photos showing up on a shared iPad.

Your options, roughly:

• Camera roll with the Hidden album. You can hide photos so they move to the Hidden album, which is locked by default from iOS 16 and opens with Face ID or Touch ID. They're out of your main library, but they still sync through iCloud Photos if that's on.
• An app that stores photos on the device. Some tracking apps keep photos in their own storage on the phone instead of your library or a company server (we compare them in best progress photo apps for iPhone). If you import a photo from your camera roll into one of these, the original is still in Photos until you delete it, and deleted photos sit in Recently Deleted for 30 days unless you empty it.
• A cloud service you've chosen deliberately. Fine if you want access across devices, as long as you know where they go and who else can see that account.

Whatever you choose, make sure you'll still be able to find the first photo in six months, since that's the one you'll want to compare against.

How do you compare progress photos?

Compare two photos at a time, taken at least four weeks apart, lined up at the same size and position. Scrolling through a camera roll is the least useful way to look at them. Your brain adjusts to small daily differences and you see nothing, or it fixates on one bad angle.

Side by side is good. A slider is better: you drag a line across two aligned photos and watch the outline shift at the waist, hips or shoulders. Line them up using fixed points, such as the top of your head, your feet and a door frame in the background. Periscope's photo comparison lets you pick any two entries and drag a before/after slider, with a body outline to help you line the shots up.

Photos work best alongside other measures. A weight trend smooths out daily swings, and a monthly waist measurement catches changes the scale can miss. For the full system, see how to track weight loss progress, and for other signs of change, non-scale victories.

A note before you start

Progress photos aren't right for everyone. If you've had an eating disorder, or you notice photos are making you check, compare or criticize your body more than you'd like, it's fine to skip them or stop. Support is available from NEDA in the US and Beat in the UK.

Sources

1. Orsama AL et al. Weight rhythms: weight increases during weekends and decreases during weekdays. Obes Facts, 2014. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24504358/
2. Kreitzman SN et al. Glycogen storage: illusions of easy weight loss, excessive weight regain, and distortions in estimates of body composition. Am J Clin Nutr, 1992. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1615908/
3. White CP et al. Fluid retention over the menstrual cycle: 1-year data from the Prospective Ovulation Cohort. Obstet Gynecol Int, 2011. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21845193/
4. Apple Support. Set up and use iCloud Photos. https://support.apple.com/en-us/108782
5. Apple Support. Hide photos with the Hidden album. https://support.apple.com/en-us/104987
6. Apple Support. Delete photos on your iPhone or iPad. https://support.apple.com/en-us/104967
7. National Eating Disorders Association. https://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/
8. Beat Eating Disorders. https://www.beateatingdisorders.org.uk/