by Monica NeaveA nutrition and fitness journal is one of the most effective weight loss tools around. It can help you track numerous factors that affect your weight and can be a great motivator as well. Most people underestimate their calorie intake yet overestimate the amount of exercise they perform. Keeping track of this in a journal can really help you to determine your weak points and make the changes necessary to shed those pounds.
There are several ways that you can go about keeping a nutrition and fitness journal. The key is to use a journal that fits your lifestyle. If you spend a lot of time on the computer you can create a worksheet or log on your office program, use pre-printed worksheets or online journals, or use one of the many online journals which do practically all the work for you. If you have limited computer time then a small notebook or a store bought journal with blank pages would be best. Although writing down your meals and workouts may seem like a big undertaking, it really is only as complicated as you wish to make it. The following are different factors that you can track and how to keep it simple or get more detailed if you wish.
Workouts
Start by writing down what activity and for how long you performed it. For example: running 30 minutes. If you want to go into more detail you can also include calories burned, heart rate, and whether you ran outside on hilly terrain or inside on the treadmill. If you're strength training you can write down what body parts you worked on and for how long. For example: Legs 40 minutes. A more detailed entry would include your sets, how many reps per set, how much weight used on each set, rest period between sets, intensity of workout, etc. The number of workouts and calories burned weekly can be crucial for weightloss. Keeping track can help you determine whether:
ˇ your morning workouts are more productive than your evening workouts
ˇ you need to increase your cardio or give the machines a rest and try some classes
ˇ you need to push yourself harder on strength training days by increasing the weight.
ˇ working out certain body parts together gets you better results, etc.
Meals
Writing down your meals can really help uncover many little mistakes that you may not notice day in and day out. Start by writing down the meal and the basic foods and amounts that you ate. For example: breakfast 2 scrambled eggs, 1 piece of toast, & 1 8oz glass of o.j. This gives you a general idea of what you're eating but if you want a more specific account then consider calories, fat, carbohydrates, and protein grams, sugar grams (which is something a lot of people worry about nowadays), and don't forget cholesterol and salt if these are problem areas for you. You can always write down the food and amount of it that you ate and do all the calculating of calories at a later time. If this seems like too much work, try out some online journals that do all the work for you. All you have to do is enter the foods and amounts and these sites will print up a complete diet analysis including percentages and averages. Either way you will be getting an idea of what you're feeding your body and start to notice patterns, like maybe you are not eating as many fruits and vegetables as you thought or you tend to eat more sweets at certain times of the week or around certain people. Once you notice a pattern you can work on changing it.
Mood
This is very helpful for people who suffer from emotional eating or cave in under pressure. If you notice that all your bad food choices coincide with stress from work or that you tend to indulge your sweet tooth too much around your husband then you can develop strategies to cope with these problems. Try buying your own healthy snacks that you can eat while your husband indulges his sweet tooth or keeping a healthy snacks stash in the office for those days when you're swamped.
Weight/Body Fat/Body Measurements
These are factors that you might want to track when a change occurs. If you lose weight, lower your body fat or reduce your measurements then later hit a plateau you can analyze your diet and exercise regimen when those positive changes occurred and compare them to your current regimen to see what needs to be fixed or improved to get you losing again. Remember that you're the only one who has to read your journal so be honest. You're more likely to make progress this way.
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