Journaling

Journaling has so many purposes and people journal about all aspects of life – from weather and farming to daily activities and emotions, and it is a great way to keep track of how you feel, look back at past triggers, and hold yourself responsible in the present.

In this post I want to write about journaling for diet and exercise. 

I started keeping track of what I was eating this summer when I was trying to lose weight. When I got home from Australia I started just writing it down in a journal and I noticed I was eating less because every time I went to eat something I would think, do I really want to write this down tonight?

One of my friends at Hopkins told me about the website My Fitness Pal. A friend from home and I started using it. Basically every day you type in what you eat and the portion size and my fitness pal tells you how many calories you have consumed. It also tells you that if every day were like that day how much you would weigh in 6 weeks. It encourages you to continue to eat healthy and never dip below 1200 calories in a day because that is when your body thinks you are starving yourself and actually begins to burn fewer calories and hold the weight. My Fitness Pal encourages you to have my fitness pal friends and while they can’t see what you’re eating, they can see when you lose a pound or two. Dieting with friends is proven to help you lose more weight so this semi-social method is extra efficient. (Also My Fitness Pal is completely free!)

After the summer I stopped using my fitness pal because to be honest I just started to forget about it. My friend LT invited me to join a Google doc she created called “the skinny sheet”. The skinny sheet has slots for breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, dinner, alcohol, cardio exercise, and strength exercise with the same effect of writing in it each day. I personally hate to write none in the exercise boxes and I love filling it in with how much I exercised so LT and the other girls on the skinny sheet can see it. I also am always proud when I write an amazing meal I’ve made or something really healthy. Since starting I've added a column for vegetarian supplements and LT has added a column for her comments on the day. Since we make it ourselves it's totally customizable. It's also a great way to share recipes!

The final journaling method I have tried is called “The Ultimate Workout Log”. The workout log is six months long and in the beginning it asks you to come up with goals for the end of six months. These are overall goals, cardio goals, strength goals, balance and flexibility goals, nutrition goals, and body goals. Six months is a good amount of time because it is a long enough time to develop to meet all of the goals but also still in the foreseeable future. 1 year would be too long, but 3 months would be too short. Each day offers a fun fitness fact at the top, and allows you space to write in your cardio exercise (with comments), strength exercise (with comments), nutrition notes for the day and balance and flexibility notes for the day. The one thing I really like about this also is that it asks you to write how you felt in the morning, rank your exercise on a scale of 1-5 on how hard you pushed yourself and your nutrition on a scale of 1-5. I enjoy writing this at the end of the day because it forces me to reflect and think about how I can change or keep the good parts for the next day. It also recommends having different scores from 1-5 for exercise throughout the week. I think this is important because sometimes this format can be intimidating. Sometimes I feel like journals like this are for super body builders and I shouldn’t even be trying, but realizing what realistic goals for myself are really help to put it in perspective and encourage me to stick to what I believe I can do.

There are so many different websites, apps, and books and methods of journaling, as I have evidenced in this post. I mentioned Mindbloom in an earlier post, and this is a very similar concept, but with less of the frills. Sometimes we just need a way to track our progress to prevent shortcomings. Regardless of what aspect of your life you want to improve on, keeping a daily journal can help get you there. Give it a try if you need a new source of inspiration.