Progress photos you can actually compare

Progress photos can show things a scale never will: how clothes sit, posture, shape. They're also the easiest records to get wrong. A photo taken in the bathroom at night, compared with one taken by a sunny window at noon, tells you more about the lighting than about you.

The fix is simple and a little boring: take every photo the same way. This guide sets out a setup you can repeat in under a minute, and how to keep the photos private.

Why consistency matters more than quality

You don't need a good camera or good lighting. You need the same camera and the same lighting. When everything except you stays fixed, any difference between two photos is a real difference. When the light, distance and angle change too, you can't tell what changed.

A setup you can repeat

Choose your setup once, write it down, and use it every time.

1. One spot. Pick a place in your home with a plain wall behind you. Mark where you stand with a bit of tape on the floor.
2. One light. The same room light, or the same window at the same time of day. Avoid mixing daylight and lamps.
3. One distance and height. Prop your phone on a shelf or a small tripod at about chest height, at a fixed spot. A self-timer or a voice shutter saves you from arm's-length selfies.
4. One set of poses. Front, side and back is a common set. Arms relaxed, feet the same width apart, looking straight ahead.
5. One outfit. Fitted clothes or swimwear that you'll keep using. A change of outfit changes the picture.
6. One time. Same time of day, ideally on the same day of the week.

How often to take them

Weekly photos are too close together for most people to see much. Every two to four weeks is a good rhythm. Some people prefer to take a set whenever their dose changes, which also lines up neatly with your injection log.

How to compare them

When you do compare, compare like with like: front with front, side with side, from sets taken in the same setup. Side by side works, and a slider that wipes from one photo to the other works even better, because your eye catches the difference as the line moves.

Same spot, same light, same pose. Then the only thing that changes is you.

Photos work best alongside other measures. A waist or hip measurement taken the same way each time, and a weight trend rather than a single number, round out the picture.

Keep them private

Progress photos are some of the most personal pictures on your phone. A few precautions are worth taking:

• Keep them out of your main camera roll if other people use your phone or your photo library is shared with family.
• Check what syncs where. Many phones back up the camera roll to a cloud service automatically.
• Think before you share. If you share a comparison, crop it to what you're happy to show.

Hushweek keeps progress photos in the app's own folder on your phone. They're never uploaded, not even to the Pro cloud backup, and never added to your camera roll by the app. On iPhone you can take one with Take a photo inside Hushweek so it never touches your camera roll; one chosen from your library is copied in, and the original stays where it was. Each photo is kept with its date and pose, so you always know which week you're looking at. Tap one to see it full size and swipe through the rest; Delete photo asks for a second tap, then removes the image from your phone, not just from the list.

The free version keeps four photos. Hushweek Pro keeps as many as you like and adds Compare, which puts two photos in one frame with a divider you drag to wipe from one to the other.

Questions people ask