So, you’ve decided to make a healthy shift in life and start working out more. It is a great decision and one that can lead you down the path to a more balanced lifestyle overall. But now you have to keep going, and keep going, and keep going – so how do you keep yourself on track?
Well, did you know that you can give yourself a little boost in a simple way? By keeping a fitness journal, there are more than a few ways that you can keep yourself on track and striving toward those important health goals.
Keep Yourself In Check
One of the most important aspects of fitness is accountability. It is all too easy to skip the gym and go do something else. But by holding yourself accountable, you give yourself the motivation needed to get into the gym and get your workout in, even if you really don’t want to do it.
Writing down your nutrition and activity is the best way to keep yourself accountable. It means being honest about what you are doing and whether or not you are sticking with the plan.
It also helps you to keep track of the things that work as well as the things that don’t. This can help you to refine your new lifestyle and find the things that suit you best.
It’s A Record Of Your Progress
A fitness journal is the best way to monitor your progress. If you are using a personal trainer, you can do them a great service by keeping a fitness journal. Although they are professionals with the knowledge and experience to make relevant suggestions, they need to get to know you as best as they can.
When they are providing you with a custom nutrition or workout plan, they need to know what works for you and what doesn’t. They aren’t there to force you into doing things that you don’t want to do. They want you to be just as driven and motivated to make positive changes as they are for you.
Therefore, keeping a fitness journal will help your trainer gain better insight into your daily progress. After all, you won’t see your trainer every day, but you can write in your fitness journal all the time.
It Keeps You Motivated
When being on a diet or new workout plan, it is all too easy to lose focus, skip a day here or there, or simply lose motivation. It is the primary reason why people struggle so much to see the results that they were hoping for.
But with a journal, it is a great way for you to stay focused on your goals. Maybe you see incremental progress here and there that you would not have otherwise noticed. Those little things can all add up, which can allow you to stay on task and stay focussed.
Not only that, but our emotions can cloud how we remember things. Maybe you felt in really good shape last week but you’re having a bad week right now. You may not remember the positive progress. But with a journal, there’s no denying that progress because you are keeping track of it all – both the good and the bad.
What To Write In Your Fitness Journal
So, you have decided that a journal is something you can get on board with. But now that you have made the decision, what goes into this thing? If you don’t know what to start with or what to log, it can feel like you are simply making a decision without knowing what goes into it.
Start with a few simple metrics when logging an entry. You want to record the time and date so that you know when it happened. Record your weight at the time, too, because it will give you a timeline for your progress.
If you are watching your diet as well as your exercise progress, then you can consider recording a description of your meals. That gives you a look into how disciplined you may or may not have been with your food intake on that day. Being on a diet means keeping track of the things you eat, when you eat them, and what your patterns are over a period of time. For those on a push to drink more water, you can record your water intake, too!
Make note of the workout or training method for that day, too. It gives you an idea of what workouts work best for you and what ones you may want to avoid. While consistency and persistence are key, it helps to do workouts and eat things that you like.
Finally, keep track of your mood. It may be a window into why you didn’t eat particularly well or why a training session got cut short. You may even see a correlation between bad moods and certain workout methods in some instances. All of this adds up to keep you on track.
Get A Fitness Journal And Stay On Track Today
Sticking to a diet or new workout plan is a lot harder than it sounds. It takes motivation, accountability, and drive to keep going on it. Little setbacks are more than enough to throw everything off track and keep you from feeling like you are making any progress.
But if you buy a journal planner, you can hold yourself accountable, keep track of progress, and stay on the right path. It takes work but making these positive life changes is not meant to be easy. In the end, however, you will be all the better for it.