Journaling Your Way To Weight-Loss / Weight loss journal ideas

 This article introduces several ways that keeping a journal can help dieters lose weight by increasing awareness of their useless thoughts and actions.

Many of my diets have been unsuccessful over the years. I'm not proud of this fact, but I think my many failed diets have taught me valuable lessons. It is very important to try to learn something from every diet going south. If you don't learn anything, your mistakes will be repeated.

 

One of the best ways to learn from your mistakes is to start writing in a journal. A magazine is a personal tool, and I usually won't tell you how to use one. But I think I should share with you some of the ways I learned to use my journal.

For starters, write down everything you eat while you eat. It may sound strange, but as I mentioned earlier, many of us actually forget some of the things we eat during the day, especially the little things. This is especially true if we're constantly snacking. Do you remember how many handfuls of Sugar Frosted Flakes you chewed on today? was it two? Or was it like nine? You have to be precise to get any benefit from this technique. Don't write that you ate "some" M&Ms. Write down that you ate "three handfuls" of M&Ms. At the end of the day, you can take out any calorie counting booklet and add up your total calories for the day. You can be the judge. How many calories did you consume? Was it a good day, or a bad day? If it was a bad day, what items made it up? Can we cut down on that tomorrow? Great!

 

Don't cheat, and don't cheat (no pun intended). If you try to pretend you didn't eat all that ice cream last week, and you tell your friend that you're on a diet but still gained weight, you have more problems than being overweight. Huh. Most of my friends can tell when I'm lying anyway.

 

If you can't be honest with your friends, then you have to at least be honest with yourself. If you're not being honest with yourself, it's called denial, and it will do nothing but frustrate you constantly. When you weigh in, you'll find that the scale remembers everything you ate. A record of where you slipped in your diet is invaluable information. Don't deny yourself that reaction.

Another type of journal entry might be your weekly problem log. You only need to fill this log for weeks that you haven't lost weight. All you need to do is to jot down the reasons you think you haven't lost weight in the past week (stress, holidays, sales on brownies, etc.). Here is a sample log:

issue log

Week 3: I ate one or two whole chocolate bunnies.

Week 7: I thought chocolate sauce was nonfat.

Week 9: Chocolate. Never mind, just chocolate.

Week 11: We didn't have any trick-or-treaters, and I ate all the fun-sized Snickers because they bothered me lying there.

Trends often emerge within a problem log. So the trend is of chocolate. The proper correction is to eat less chocolate, preferably not

chocolate. Yes, life is unfair.

The challenge then is finding ways to reduce chocolate intake. The best thing I can do to help myself is to stay away from 7-Eleven stores. We all have our secret little places we go to for our "improvements." Resist the urge to go to them and pretend you need a vegetable fix, or a fruit fix, instead. Take a big bite out of that carrot and say out loud, "Yeah, oh, I really needed that." Make sure no one is within earshot first.

 

Not everyone's problem log will be filled with "chocolate" entries. Some people will drink too much alcohol (oops...too many problems), while others will eat too much junk food. Others will drink a 12-pack of soda per day, while others will eat as much meat in a week as some of us eat in a year. The point is, by using a log like this, you'll be able to see which things or events affect your weight loss the most.

A journal can also be used to keep track of your exercise sessions. Keep track of the number of hours you exercise per week and the type of exercise you do. It's also helpful to keep a weekly exercise goal in mind as you travel through your diet. This can be expressed in calories or hours, whichever suits you best. The goal is a constant reminder to incorporate exercise into your weight loss plan.

One of my favorite ways to use a journal is to regroup and reorganize after a terrible weight gain. Whatever I am thinking at the moment, I write it down just to swing my pen. Often the first few words reveal my mood, and I'm often not a happy camper. Here are some examples:

January 6th - Okay Johnny, what happened? Wait, I guess, you shouldn't have eaten at McDonald's three times this week. When will you learn to stay away from those places? are you on my side Or are you just going through the motions?

January 27 - I just want to say one thing ... What is in the four pieces of cake at the wedding? What would you possibly be thinking? Your plan this week was to stick to vegetables. Did you temporarily forget that cakes are not in the vegetable family? What can you do next week to stay away from that junk?

February 17th - Well, this week has been shot. I feel like we have a lot of weeks going on, aren't we Johnny? And didn't we have the same conversation a few weeks ago? Yes I guess we did? stop! Maybe there are other areas of your life that we can mess with as well. Why should we limit it to dieting?

You might think I'm being a little hard on myself in these journal entries, but I take all my frustrations out there. I usually stop bothering myself after a few paragraphs, and then I write down some positive goals for the coming week.

It is also helpful to keep a diary of your thoughts and thoughts regarding your diet each day. Any topic related to diet is not off limits. Sample topics might include: Are you drinking eight glasses of water every day? Did you eat it big time at dinner last night? Have you had any revelations or breakthroughs in your diet strategy?

 

It's important to focus on what negatively and positively affects your progress each week. It is helpful to review the previous week's journal entries over the weekend or on any day you choose. It serves as an input to your diet planning process. Throw away what doesn't work and welcome what works for you. When you read your journal again, you might be surprised at what you wrote. Were you really the one who wrote that paragraph three weeks ago? Have you really eaten all that much in one day? or "Oh my god, I'm so mad." You'd be surprised how many states of mind you find yourself in.

Within your own journal, you can do much more than just write. I like to photograph restaurants that are safe to visit, and I like to photograph and list the foods I can and can't eat, separated by a big thick impenetrable line called I pulled over and did not dare to cross. I even tried making apple fritters one at a time, but it didn't taste delicious. It looked like a poorly designed, ugly hairpiece, but that's not the point. I knew it was an apple dumpling and knew I couldn't eat it. Those kinds of things work for me; You should know what will work for you.

 

Remember, however, that the journal won't do the hard work for you. The magazine can help you spot trends in your eating behavior, but you'll have to reverse the bad trends on your own. So please learn these lessons thoroughly, and if you need to restart your diet, as I have done many times, start with conviction.