7 Ideas For Your Fitness and Nutrition Journal

Do you have a hard time keeping on top of your fitness and nutrition goals? We hear you, eating healthily and exercising regularly is hard.

But here’s the good news: journaling can help.

Journals help us to record our experiences, identify mistakes, and celebrate successes. They are a key tool in maintaining accountability and keeping your eyes set firmly on your goals. These benefits are incredibly important in fitness and health, where the battle is just as much mental (do I really need that donut?), as it is physical.

By journaling about your fitness journey, you gain insight into how you are doing, improve your focus on your goals, and track your overall development. Changes in weight, strength, and cardiovascular fitness take time, and unless you record how you progress, it can often seem like nothing is happening at all.

Best of all, all it takes is a few minutes, a pen, and some paper.

Ready to get started?

Here are seven popular methods you could use in your journal to track and improve your fitness and health:

1. Goal Setting

Most people don’t start out exercising and dieting because they love it (although you may come to). Your goals are more significant than that – you want to feel better, look better, live longer, or perhaps just run a marathon to raise some money for charity.

Your goals are whatever motivates you to get out of bed in the morning, slip on your workout clothes, and head out the door for a run or to the gym. And like any goal or vision, it’s easy to lose sight of it over time. Setting your goals down in your journal and then regularly returning to them or reiterating them can help you stay motivated to reach your end goal.

2. Exercise Logs & Training Routines

An exercise log enables you to track your performance across multiple workouts, recording reps done, weight lifted, or miles run for future reference. This can be useful both to remind you what exercises you’re planning to do (as a training routine) and as a great way to record your progress across multiple sessions.

3. Food & Nutrition Diary

What we eat plays a huge role in our fitness journeys, which is why it’s problematic that we find it so easy to lie to ourselves about what we eat. Three healthy meals a day, sure – but what about all those snacks? Recording everything you eat in your journal is a tried-and-tested method of keeping yourself accountable.

4. Meal Plans

Meal plans are different from a food diary. Instead of tracking what you’ve eaten, you’re planning in advance what foods you’re going to eat for the day, week, or month. You can then record your success or failure at doing this during your journaling time.

5. Tracking Habits

A habit tracker is a simple way of measuring whether you did a habit or not. For some people, this is all they need to measure their health and fitness – they simply record a yes or no for days that they exercised. You could also track other health habits, including how much water you drank or whether you went to bed on time, had a healthy breakfast, or took your vitamins and/or medicine.

6. Mood Journal

Your mental health is just as important as your physical health. A mood journal records how you are feeling each day, enabling you to keep track and find patterns in how you are feeling. Perhaps you start to notice you always feel worse on a Thursday – why? Journaling helps you track and explore these emotions – and, hopefully, to find a solution to any problems you encounter.

7. Sleep Journal

Most of us don’t get enough sleep, an issue which is associated with a wide range of problems, including increased risk of diabetes, strokes, heart disease, depression, and more. Check out this article by the NHLBI to find out more about why you should be sleeping more, then start tracking it in your journal!

Isn’t Tracking Everything Hard Work?

Yes. Yes it is. And for some people that is absolutely what they need to do to keep themselves motivated and on track.

But here’s the thing – there are no rules that govern how much you need to track. The good thing about journaling is that you can create a process that works for you, your goals, and your life. The methods other people use are just guidelines – take what is good for you and discard the rest.

Don’t get us wrong, tracking everything is a tried and tested method of achieving success, because tracking something helps ensure it improves. But it can get to the point where journalling and tracking your health and fitness goals can be almost as time-consuming and exhausting as your workouts.

If you’re a busy mom, or work long hours, the extra effort of journaling everything might be exactly what causes you to give up.

Sound familiar? Maybe you need to try microjournaling.

A micro journal is a condensed version of a normal journal. It could be a single word or sentence, a number, an emoji, or even a quick sketch that sums up your health and fitness journey for that day – “ate too much,” “new personal best – 35,” or “cheat day.”

It doesn’t have to be complex to be effective. Take what works for you, use it how you like, and good luck reaching your health and fitness goals!

Nate S

Nathan graduated from the Professional Writing Program at the University of Oklahoma with a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism and a minor in history. He earned his Master’s of Business Administration from Webster University. While working in newspaper, his stories appeared regularly above the fold and appeared on the AP Western Wire and in the Multiple Sclerosis Organization’s magazine.