Would you feel confident if someone asked you to rate your overall health? If not, you must think about beginning a health journal. Keeping it will give you a clear view of how your lifestyle choices affect your health and overall well-being. It is a great self-care tool that gives you an overview of the main aspects of your health. Now, the question is, how to make this journal that helps you achieve your health goals?
You can make this journal as detailed and track all the health parameters. Here are seven tips you should remember while making this journal. Let’s find out!
Know Yourself
You may feel you already know about yourself, but to use a health journal, you need to know where you are and where you want to be. It can also be a health or a fitness goal you want to achieve. So, decide what you want to gain or track using this journal. This journal can help you track the following too:
- Exercises
- Healthy habits
- Headache patterns
- Foods that do not suit you
Set Achievable Fitness And Health Goals
Once you are aware of what you want to achieve, divide your health and fitness goals into three parts:
- Body
- Food
- Mind
Jot down achievable goals in your health journal. Do not set impractical goals because you set yourself up for failure like this. You can avoid it by setting smaller goals smaller and giving yourself room to adjust. It is not easy to break a pattern overnight. So, consider that it will take a little effort and self discipline. Do not get lost in trends. Staying true to yourself is enough!
Make An Exercise Log
It is very satisfying and rewarding when you complete a workout you planned. It can feel like a pat on your back. The exercise logs in your health journal will motivate you to step up and reach your goals. You can log in to your fitness and exercise goals in various ways. It can range from logging your daily activities to a specific exercise regime you follow. The daily activities are included in this log because the time you run any errand still counts as you are active. So, do not limit yourself to thinking you exercise only when you are in a gym or doing specific exercises.
Keep A Food Diary
Keeping a food diary makes health journaling interesting. It helps you understand what you eat day in & out from any processed meats, sugary drinks, sauces or fatty fast foods. It makes you a little more cautious of the food you put in your body and helps you adopt a new mindset regarding food. You may have food goals to lose weight or cultivate healthy eating habits.
You can start writing down everything you eat in this food diary, be very specific and even write down the calories you consumed. It eventually helps you develop healthy eating habits.
Challenge Yourself Every Month
Set a monthly challenge for yourself. It helps you stay motivated, and the best part is the challenge can be something as simple as wanting to be able to run 3 kilometres by the end of the month. You can set a monthly health goal, write it down in your health journal and decide the steps you need to take to achieve this goal!
It can even take some research to know if you know of different techniques or methods to achieve your goal. Hence, make sure you choose the one that suits your needs the best!
Use It As A Condition Tracker
You can use a health journal to monitor a specific health parameter or your journey to achieve a goal. You can use this journal to track how a food type makes you feel, your water intake, medication, sleep patterns, energy levels and much more!
It helps you correlate between the food you intake and how your body is responding to it. Say your goal is to lose weight. You can monitor such goals by noticing changes and pinpointing problems you were unaware of.
Track Your Habits
You may be unaware of your bad habits. You can use the health journal to track them and replace bad ones with healthier ones. In the initial months of habit tracking, you will find any unhealthy choices you made.
Having a habit tracker in this journal helps you improve your food and fitness-related habits leading you to live a healthy life.