Four months of consistent training and the scale has not moved, how do you tell whether a programme is working?

For the look-like-I-train part, two measures that are far less noisy than weight:

A tape measure. Waist, hips, thigh, upper arm, chest. Once a month, same time of day, same conditions. This is what actually catches the thing the scale hides - waist down and thigh or arm up at the same total weight is a large change and the scale reports nothing.

Photos. Same spot, same light, same clothes, same time of day, monthly. This is the one everybody skips and the one that most reliably shows people that something happened. Day-to-day change is invisible in the mirror because you see yourself constantly; four months apart is obvious.

Both are unpleasant the first time and both are far more informative than a daily weigh-in.

A note on the scale if you keep using it: weigh at the same time under the same conditions, and look at a weekly average rather than any single reading. Daily fluctuation of a kilo or more is completely normal and has nothing to do with anything you did. People react to noise and change their training on the strength of it.

And on your clothes feeling different: that is real data, not imagination. It is usually the first thing people notice and it usually precedes anything visible in a photo.

The scale is the least informative number available to you, and for what you want it is close to useless.

It measures total mass and cannot distinguish between muscle, fat, water, food in transit and where you are in the day. Over four months of training it commonly stays flat while the composition underneath it changes substantially - which is very likely exactly what has happened and why your clothes feel different.

What to measure instead, starting with the one that matters most: what the bar does.

Write down every session, exercise, weight, sets, reps. Then compare this month against your first month. If you are lifting more weight, or the same weight for more reps, or the same sets with better form and less struggle, the programme is working. That is not a proxy for progress; for strength it is the definition.

The fact that you have no idea whether four months did anything is, honestly, a logging problem rather than a training problem. Four months of numbers would answer your question in thirty seconds and you would not be asking it.

Start today even though you have lost the first four months. In eight weeks you will have something to look at, and that comparison is the thing that makes it possible to keep going.

Clothes feeling different is a real signal and it is the one people dismiss because it cannot be written down.

Almost never missed, three times a week, four months. That is the part that is working.

A short checklist for whether a programme is doing its job, since you have no records to look back on.

Over the next eight weeks, ask:

Are the working weights going up at all? Even in small increments, even on some lifts and not others. Movement in any direction upward is the main signal.

Are the reps at a given weight going up? Progress often shows here first, particularly for people who cannot make small jumps because of the plates available.

Does a weight that was hard feel easier? Subjective and genuinely informative, the same load moving with more control is adaptation.

Are you recovering better? Four days of soreness after a session becoming one is progress even if nothing else changed.

Are you still showing up? Four months at three sessions a week and almost never missing is the hardest part of this and you have already done it.

If several of those are yes and the scale is flat, the programme is working and the scale is measuring the wrong thing.

If none of them are yes after another two months of consistent training, then the programme is the problem rather than the measurement - usually not enough progressive load, or too much variety to progress anything. But you cannot make that judgement without the log, which is why the first answer is the one to act on today.