Prograde University

Getting in shape doesn’t have to be hard. Often, people make it much harder than it needs to be by approaching it as if it’s a matter of pure willpower. Often this means burning out after a few weeks or months, or seeing all of your hard work undone when you start to fall back into old habits.

So how do you make your fitness goals succeed?

One trick that makes it easier is to keep a fitness journal. A fitness journal is a tool you use to record vital information – your diet, your workouts, and any other factors that may affect your fitness. These journals can be invaluable, because they help you determine what works and what doesn’t, and they make it easier to set realistic goals.

Many people aren’t sure how to keep a fitness journal, or they worry it will be too much work. But a fitness journal can be easy. Here are a few tips to make yours simple and effective:

• Track calories: If you can write down your estimated daily calorie intake, it’s a much quicker and easier method than writing down every meal you eat. It also helps you stay in the habit of checking calories. Just make sure your estimates are accurate!

• Summarize workouts: You should track what kinds of workouts you do, with basic details. For instance, “ran today” isn’t as useful as “ran 3 miles, took 26 minutes.” You don’t have to get every single detail, but you should be able to look back and see what workouts you did and how you have improved or backslid over time.

• Sleep and stress: These are powerful factors affecting your fitness. If you can track how many hours of sleep you get, you’ll be able to correlate it to your best workouts. Stress levels are also worth recording, whether simply with a numeric rating (1 is very stressed, 5 is feeling great) or with more detailed notes. Noting how easy or hard it was to find the willpower to do your workout can also be revealing.

• Snacking and desserts: Most of us have a hard time avoiding snacks in between meals or treats after dinner, but these can be major sources of extra calories. Track how much you snack to find easy ways to cut back.

• Drinking alcohol is also a source of extra calories. Note how many drinks you have each day.

After just a few weeks you will have valuable information you can use to improve your fitness. Maybe you always feel motivated to run, but you end up eating extra snacks afterward. Maybe you’re getting less sleep on the nights that you drink more. You can use this information to make positive changes to support your fitness goals.