Just like your diary, a fitness journal is simply a notebook or your electrical note for you to list down your activities, diet plans, and exercise goals. A lot of you who want to achieve a realistic plan should start keeping a fitness journal. Noting down your fitness involves activities for a month or two, and when you look back, you can be very surprised at how a lot of things have improved. More importantly, you can also figure out what works for you and what does not work out during your journey.
Keeping a fitness journal might require a lot of your time and commitment at first. But, once it becomes a part of your daily life, you sure are going to thank it later. Check out various convincing reasons why you should have a fitness journal.
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Keeping yourself accountable might be the first step achievement of every journal. Likewise in fitness, you need the same energy. With a fitness journal, you can stay on track with your fitness at a better level. You can note down your planned calories burn, track the number of calories you have intakes and spent. It is a book that allows you to be honest with yourself.
For example, you can plan either your morning workout or evening workout, how many minutes you need to involve in your workout, your nutrition counts, meal preps. Then, you can stick to it and observe the change. By having everything noted, you can study later what option works best for you. You can also omit the plans that do not work for you in the future.
Another main reason why you need to keep a fitness journal is for you to note your current weight, update the future weight, and compare both of them to see the progress. Most fitness enthusiasts always weigh themselves and track their body/health information daily or weekly (some can do that monthly; depends). By seeing progress, it is a signal that reminds you to keep going and that it is the right path to walk. Some people shared that keeping their fitness logged, allows them to see the pattern on how things work out for them. Additionally, it gets them inspired to keep going.
Don't take it lightly! Taking note of your progress really works effectively for people who really want to lose weight but can only learn the hardest. And, getting fit or losing weight does not happen overnight. Therefore, to prevent yourself from abandoning your goal halfway, learn to observe your progress and be patient with it by logging all of your activities. Don't forget that you can track anything: be it your diet, exercise, mood, water intake, rest hours, etc. Even with an increase in water level, growth of lean muscle, and 1% drop of fat are also counted as progress. That's counted as working for you.
When you keep a fitness journal, you can define factors that make your fitness journey a successful one or a failed one. For example, if you are a carb intolerant person, you would notice that eating rice does not make any progress on your weight loss as your body has no ability to digest those carbohydrates. Therefore, deterring your digestion rate and losing weight at a very slow pace. Without a journal to log your everyday activities and nutrition, how would you ever know that carbs should be the thing you have to be careful with?
Some people even notice the factors that make their fitness journey fail. Those factors include overworking themselves, getting stressed out, not getting enough rest and sleep, not drinking enough water. Perhaps, you would not be able to notice these tiny details for the first month. However, once it becomes a pattern, you can tell right away of what works, and what doesn't.
If you go to the gym with your personal trainer, your trainer would definitely note down every detail of your nutrition, and every detail of your workout. Normally, a fitness trainer would, first of all, motivate you, look for what exercises that best fit your goal, lead and instruct. What is more, they can also give you advice on how to do the meal prep (some fitness trainers also take charge of their trainee's daily diet & nutrition).
If they can keep a record of you, why can't you keep a record of yourself when you do a home workout or once you are done with a session with the trainer? Not everyone is able to afford a personal fitness trainer. Thus, you can always note down everything, work on yourself for yourself, and become your own personal trainer.
Now that you know the reasons why you should keep a fitness journal of yourself, it is time for you to take action. You might want to do these things:
Getting on a fitness journey is not easy. Indeed, it is an inner personal battle with yourself. You are going to put it all in or be nothing at all. However, it is sure going to be worth it. To assist you along the way, wouldn't it be good to have your own fitness journal to track down your diet, weight, calories, mood, and more? You might also look back at it and be happy with the result and goal that you have achieved so far. Whilst you know the reasons why you should have a fitness journal, wouldn't it be nice to know how to organize a good fitness notebook?
