To lose weight and keep it off, and to generally take care of your wellness and fitness levels, you need to make small and progressive changes in your diet and exercise regime. Still, the problem with small changes is that it’s hard to see how they impact your wellbeing at all, which means you can throw your hands up and say “what’s the point”. However, there is a simple and effective way to help you make and keep track of those changes; an exercise journal.
There are many benefits to keeping an exercise diary or journal:
1. They help to clarify and focus your fitness goals.
2. You can easily break down your goals into manageable chunks.
3. You can plan ahead to your future activities and exercises.
4. You can see what you actually do every day, rather than getting a warped sense of reality.
5. You can record all those important stats and facts that you’d probably forget unless you’re Rain Man or (good) Will Hunting. This can help to make things more precise moving forward, as it takes the guess work out of the fitness and weight loss equation.
6. You can see how far you’ve come, and how far you need to go to reach your goals, which will help to keep you motivated.
7. You can get a better understanding of your exercise habits and barriers, and this will help you to adjust your routine where you’re going wrong, and maximise on the things that produce great results.
8. You won’t skimp or overdo it on rest days as these can be easily scheduled and monitored.
9. You can better understand and improve your sleeping habits.
10. You have a better chance of preventing and managing injuries if you record every wobbly moment.
As you can see, there are a ridiculous amount of benefits to keeping an exercise journal, but you’ll only see those benefits if you rigidly stick to filling it out all the time, right? Maybe keeping an exercise diary is good in theory, but in practise it’s just too complicated and time-consuming. On the contrary, not only can an exercise diary be simple and quick to maintain, this is exactly how it should be done. As I’ve already mentioned, in order to succeed with regards to health and fitness, you need to make small, maintainable changes, so you should see your diary as just another little change.
So what should you record in your exercise journal? After a workout, note down the date and time your exercised as well as the exercises you did. How intense was your exercise? If it was aerobic activity, measure the intensity in terms of your heart rate and write down your weight training in terms of the number of sets and reps you performed, plus the size of any of the weights you used. If you’re walking, jogging, cycling or swimming, make a note of the distance you covered. In any case, you should estimate how much energy you’ve burned while exercising.
Once you’ve started the basic journal, you can start to mix it up with all kinds of fun extras. Remember, you don’t have to add all this info, but think of it as customising your journal to fit your needs. Additional information you can use includes the amount and quality of sleep you get, your daily energy levels, your weight or waistline measurements and your daily emotions. None of this information you’re including needs to be complicated or technical, but having a rough idea of what does on each day can let you see exactly how you progress, and exactly how the exercise is impacting your life.
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