[david-given]

Well, only the first two are objective --- the others are all way too subjective, as they depend horribly on how motivated I am. Even the objective measures are hugely variable, so in order to get any actual data, I have to measure trends over months, rather than weeks.

Being told that I need six months' work before anything measurable happens is not really something I find motivating!

[personalcompute]

One of the things you get to track improvement on with exercise is the ability to motivate yourself. It is part of you improving your physical and mental health, not unwanted noise.

For me when I started exercising seriously I started noticing I was consistently beating my personal bests [1] after about 2 weeks. It doesn't take 6 months. I even started feeling great from the cardio on Day 1.

[1] Running times over a set distance, and amount of pushups/pullups/situps in a row. If I actually recovered properly it would probably take even less time to beat the initial records.