Using a Diet and Exercise Journal Properly 

Some of the best weight loss results are in direct results to the use of a diet and exercise journals. There is a great reason you use journals or planners to help with weight loss, and it is not because of the traditional way of using them.

I will use journals and planners interchangeably, there are subtle differences, but overall you can use either. For our purpose, they are interchangeable.

Using a journal lets you see your entire day right in front of you.

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When you start to journal what you’re eating every day, you can see what you are doing throughout your day. The journaling is not to write inspirational quotes, which you can still do, but to analyze your behavior.

Through self-knowledge, you can start to make changes. You cannot make changes if you do not know what you are doing. We need to face the truth, and that comes in with journaling or some tracker.

Of course, when you first start to journal your day, you will not remember to write everything you intake, but with time you will be able to jot down everything that goes into your mouth.

The most interesting thing about journaling is that once you start to see little things you do, you will start to make small corrections. These minute corrections only make a small impact at the beginning but add up exponentially and surprisingly the effort is negligible and feels easy.

After you start to analyze what you have written down, you will start to make some small corrections.  I recommend not making too many changes since many changes or quick changes might not be maintainable, and you will be back to square one.

How to Log on Your Diet and Exercise Journal – Planner

When recording in your planner or journal, at first simply write the major things you are doing and eating and nothing else.

You need to learn the new behavior of writing things down every day. Yes, it does take a little bit of getting used to logging everything down.

When recording what you’re eating write the times that you’re eating and not just what you ate.

The step mentioned above will be the easiest step and needs to be done right after you eat anything, not later on. If you wait for later, you will forget then record something incorrectly, and this tends to happen often with a lot of journalers.

After 1 to 2 weeks of getting into the habit of writing things down, make an effort to be even stricter and write everything even the “insignificant” things. I mean, gum you chew and spit out, cigarettes you smoke, beer you drink, water you take in, everything that goes into your body.

The reason you will be recording this is that  you will be observing your emotions and sense of hunger when recording your intake.

Each time you eat or drink is because of a reason; sensation of hunger, fatigue, simply bored, anxious, angry, or just a funny/funky emotion.

As you become in tune with your body, you will be able to detect emotional and physiological behaviors with everything you take in.

If it is 10:00 am, and you get hungry, you will realize it happens all the time, and it does not matter if you had a good breakfast or not. It happens because you have trainer yourselves to have a snack at 10:00 am during “break” time.

So if you write down that you are hungry, board or fatigued then you can correlate an action of eating with just being bored or fatigued and that might be something to fix. Observations might spark you to make a behavior change to fix that problem.

It has been found out through research that if you keep an eating log, you tend to make your corrections without prompting from a weight loss professional. How using a journal helps to keep weight off.

Using a planner to log your workouts is a little simpler. You write down all of the exercises you are going to be performing, jot down the weights and the number of repetitions. Also, write down the number of sets.

The most important thing here though is evaluating the previous repetitions and the goals set.

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As an example: Squatting (a heavy movement) if you are squatting 150# for 15 repetitions then you will write down 150/15 repetitions for the most recent workout, but one of the most important numbers is the next number which is a goal number and looks like this  150#/15,     _ /(17). This 17 is the next goal that you will attempt the next visit.

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During your next visit, you look at your log, and you see  _/(17) there is no need to think about anything else but the absolute goal of achieving those 17 reps.

Logging the way described above will provide constant progression, and if you have slept properly, there is no reason why you should not be able to achieve this goal.

After you achieve the 17th repetitions, you write it down like this 150#/17,  _/(19) for your next goal and so forth until you reach 20 or 21 reps. Once you achieve 20 or 21 repetitions, then your notation will look like this  150#/20, 155/_ and your goal is to get at least 15 reps with 155#.

Upper body repetition scheme is 8-12, add weight once you reach 12 you add 2.5#.

Repetition scheme for lower body is 15 to 20 receptions, and after 20 repetitions you add 5#

One more bit of information that needs to be noted is the amount of time it takes to complete the workout.

A Good Exercise Program Has a Tempo and Controlled Rest Periods:

Make sure you jot down everything quickly and move on to the next exercise and be ready within 25 seconds. I know this sounds quick, but if you know your gym and learn to set yourself up quickly, then this should not be too big of a deal. Little rest between exercises and sets means a bonus to your workouts, your heart rate tends to stay up, and you are super-efficient.

At the end of the 25th second you are already getting set for the next exercise, and 5 seconds later you start your repetitions.

The repetition tempo is like this: 1 second rest at the top of the movement, slowly descend for the first 2 inches, go down for 3 seconds pause at the bottom for 1 second, the first 2 inches going up are slow then take 3 seconds to get up, repeat.

A workout like this is professional, and results are consistent. No frills, just intense good work. Anyone can do this, but you have to work at it!