Top 3 Reasons to Keep a Diet & Exercise Journal

Many of us have tried diet plan after diet plan or various exercise regimes. Some have succeeded while others have failed; a few might not have had any change whatsoever too. Whatever your category did you also keep a journal to go along with your diet and exercise? Probably not as a lot of people do not think it can help too much.

Helpfulness aside, a diary is very easy to maintain. It only takes a quick minute or two of your time documenting what you ate, when you consumed it, and any exercise is all it takes to complete an entry. You can be as detailed as you want in the logbook as long as you cover all of those three essentials. Personally I do not include things like the calories of my meal, portion size, etc., but some people swear by it. Really it all depends on personal preference; if you usually eat the same size portions of everything and have an estimate on the caloric intake per food item you should not really need to detail it so much.

Once you get into a habit of writing after you eat and exercise it becomes second nature too. At work when it is time for lunch I always unknowingly grasp my journal right along with my meal as if it is just as important, which it is! Two years ago I used diet and exercise to go from 262 pounds down to 180 without using a record book. However, it has not been so easy the second time around... until I started my journal. Now it is quite easy to identify my trends, where I was going wrong, and what had the best impact on my weight. So why did it have such an impact?

Humans are visual creatures. A lot of us like to see things to properly appreciate them. Simply having our health habits in a readable form rather than in our heads is a tremendous help. When you can see exactly how each thing you do impacts your weight loss you can find the best trends for your body and what to stay away from too. If one day you are at a bad spot you can also look back through the history as a reminder of how well you are doing. There is no reason to get down; you have documented proof that it is a fluke. Essentially the key here is to look at everything in a positive, not negative, light for additional motivation.

Exercise is all about small improvements. Your body will naturally get stronger by incrementally increasing its work load instead of staying at a steady place. Moreover, using the same exact routine will eventually lead to a plateau; to overcome this you must constantly push yourself. It is a lot easier to know that yesterday you ran 5:00 and today you should run 5:01 if it is documented. Of course how much you increase each time is up to you, but slow increases are usually better than no increase at all. The wo/man who runs 5:00 today and was running 5:00 two months ago will not see the same result as the wo/man running 6:00 today compared to 5:00 previously. While I am not saying you cannot slowly increase your exercise load without a journal it is quite easier when you can see where you are. With a journal there is no excuse to forget where you are at in an exercise routine.

Even a lot of people who keep diet logs do not keep track of their emotions, which would only help their diet. Not only is doing so a good way to know your triggers, but it is a form of therapy too (free therapy I might add). There is no denying that getting our emotions out of our heads is a good thing. A lot of people do it all the time for reasons other than diet and exercise. When you know what triggers are causing you to fall off the wagon it becomes easier to avoid them. Moreover, looking through the history you can start to rationalize bits that have gone awry for one reason or another and thus not feel so down about it. "My boyfriend and I had a fight that day." leading to a .5 weight gain makes it easier to take than just seeing a flat .5 weight gain on the scale or paper. You have not only rationalized it but have helped get the anger out of your system too rather than keeping it inside till you can talk to your girlfriends about what he did. A win-win for everyone.