Fitness Journals
I don't like to make comparisons between fitness and religion, but fitness journals have a way of getting you to confess your workout sins. It's hard to believe that a little book can keep you on track, but keeping my own fitness journals one for my workouts and one for my eating plan kept me motivated and honest with myself and my body when I began my foray into fitness.
A fitness journal is simply a place to keep track of your workout sessions, eating habits, and daily progress. A fitness journal isn't a diet program personally, I believe that diets are built to fail but they provide an honest place for you to write down how you performed in your daily workout:
- What exercises you did
- What level you performed at
- How many sets and reps you did
- What weights you used
- How much time it took to do each exercise
- How you felt afterwards
When keeping a fitness journal I always found it helpful to leave a space for comments at the bottom for things like:
- What I ate that day or how long ago I ate before my work out
- How much sleep I got the night before
- Time of day I worked out
- How much weight I lost or muscle I gained so far
- Do I notice an increase in energy?
- Do I feel like I could have worked harder?
- Do I experience any pain and where?
By keeping a fitness log history, you can easily plan the following weeks' workout and meal schedule based on the experience of the previous workouts.
Most fitness journals can be kept in a simple notebook or sketch pad (for a mere $2). You can also cut and paste pictures of your ideal body in them to keep you motivated. For example, I pinned a pic of fitness model Amy Fadhli on my fridge to keep me away from late night snacks.
A more advance tool is the online fitness journal. These work the same as hard copy, however I found that logging my workouts, weight, body fat percentage, sleeping patterns and diet online was much more legible than my chicken scratch. Online fitness journals are a great way to store workout progress if you're not a fan of paper pile up you just need an Internet connection. Many fitness sites offer this service free to readers. If you don't have the luxury of the Internet but have a computer, you can still keep a tidy electric fitness log in a Word or Excel document.
