Measuring Your Progress with Exercise and Food Journals

Posted on July 12, 2009

Measuring Your Progress

If you really want to have success with the eat-move-think lifestyle you are building, you need to monitor what you are eating and how much you are moving. Not only does a daily record of your food intake and activity level help you measure your progress, but when you know you have to write it down, you're much more likely to keep yourself honest.

If you struggle with eating emotionally or eating for entertainment instead of nutrition, maintaining a food journal can help you identify the weakest moments in your day so that you can develop strategies for overcoming your temptations. An exercise journal can help you by logging your activity throughout the day and motivating you to increase your level of activity.

Your food journal does not have to be fancy. You don't have to buy anything special. You can even use a calendar. The most important aspect of a food journal is to write down everything you eat and drink - including the handful of M&Ms you grabbed from a co-worker or the Martini you had before dinner.

By recording everything you consume, you can see where you are undermining your diet with high-calorie, thoughtless munchies. You can begin to retrain your mind to think about what you eat in terms of what it will add to your daily caloric intake or how it will affect your ability to meet your fitness goals.

Your food journal can be completely private, not shared with anyone else. Its sole purpose is to help you understand your own areas of weakness and learn how to overcome them. If you tend to do fine all day but then cave during your afternoon break and have a candy bar, you can learn to pack a healthy snack for that period of time or train yourself to go for a walk instead of being tempted by the candy machine. If you do fine all day but start your morning with a high-calorie mocha latte, you can identify the problem and switch to straight black coffee, saving you calories and money.

You should include in your food journal the type and amount of food you ate, what time of day you ate, and where you were (office desk, living room, kitchen, etc.). Other items to include that can help you identify your at-risk eating habits are details about who was with you when you were eating, how satisfied you were from eating, what kind of mood you were in before and after, and whether or not you were doing anything (like watching TV or working) while you were eating.

Your exercise journal can also be as simple as a notebook in which you write down your daily activity. The purpose is twofold: you need to be working toward achieving a minimum of 30 minutes of exercise a day and recording your activity in the journal will help you measure it, and you need to recognize what prevents you from exercising so that you can overcome it.

In addition to writing down what exercise activity you performed and how long, you should record the time of day and how you felt before and after exercising. If you did not exercise, be sure to record why you did not, how it made you feel, and what caused the problem with your ability to move, whether it was lack of motivation, a sick child, too much work, or something else.

As you move through the 12-week plan, your journal will begin to tell the story of your challenges and achievements. Your food and activity journals are great tools for helping you succeed and met your fitness goals.

Come visit us anytime! TourdePhat.com I'll be at the club and I'll see you there.

Live Infinite, Inc / Tour de Phat Club, James F Nuzzo www.tourdephatclub.com info@tourdephatclub.com 2009 James F Nuzzo All Rights Reserved TW7 - 0209

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