What Does Keeping An Exercise And Nutrition Journal Have To Do With Losing Weight?--Everything!

From your exercise (strength training and cardio) to your food intake, keeping track of it all will surely lead to a quicker improvement in both of these areas, which in turn leads to a more successful weight loss. I GUARANTEE!

What do you mean by “keeping track of it”?

What I mean is simply writing down or recording every one of your workouts and all of the foods you eat.

It has been proven that people who keep a food journal are more successful with their weight loss program than people who don’t.

It doesn’t actually have to be written down.

It can be typed on a computer also.

I find it easier to write everything down because it’s easy to just put it into a Food & Exercise Journal that you can take with you anywhere as opposed to having to be near a computer.

What exactly should be recorded?

For your exercises, you should write down the exercise performed, how much weight you are using, how many sets and how many reps.

Your cardio should include what mode (running, walking, biking, etc.) duration, distance covered, and heart rate (if you desire).

For you food intake, simply write down every meal you’ve eaten for the day and at what time.

Now let’s look at exactly why this will help you lose weight in the long run.

First we’ll cover the exercise part.

It is extremely important to remember how much weight you are lifting for each exercise as well as how many sets and reps.

Let’s say for example that one day you increase your bicep curls from 10 to 12 reps, but you don’t write this down.

Now keep in mind, this is just one of 12 exercises that you might be doing during your workout routine.

Now, you workout again 2 days later but can’t seem to remember if you increased to 12 reps or 11 reps?

So what do you do? You do 11 because that’s what you seem to remember doing. And right there is a great example of moving backwards and regressing because you never wrote down what you did.

This works just the same for the amount of weight you are lifting. And that’s even harder to remember.

Let’s look at a sample workout routine:

Wts./Reps
Chest Press 30/12 40/10 45/9 50/6
Shoulder Press 10/15 15/12 20/12 25/9 30/7
Squats 32 25 18 15
Bicep Curls 10/13 15/10 20/8 20/6
Tricep Push Downs 20/12 25/10 30/8 35/7 35/6
Lat. Pull Down 45/15 55/10 60/8 60/6 60/6
Lunges 15 R&L 12R&L 12R&L 10R&L
Crunches 25 22 17 15

I don’t know about you, but I have enough going on in my life and there’s no way that I’m going to remember all of those numbers listed above.

I don’t think you would be able to either.

And with a solid strength training routine you should be increasing these numbers every couple of weeks or so.

This makes it even harder to remember.

You want to make sure you are always at best lifting the same weight as you did the last time.

One sure way to slow down your progress and actually regress is not writing down your workouts and “guessing” how much weight you lifted last time or how many reps you did.

It doesn’t take long to just write it down.

What some people do, myself included, is write down the weights, reps, and sets in between exercises.

This is a perfect time to jot down what you’ve just done.

Writing it all down also lets you look back at what does and doesn’t work well for you.

You might look back a few months ago, at a time when you were in your best shape, and see exactly what exercises you were doing that helped you look and feel so good.

Maybe you were doing lunges and squats.

Now, after seeing this, you might want to incorporate them back into your program.

Looking back at your past workouts will also help to motivate you.

How motivating is it to see that 2 months ago you were doing 3 sets of the chest press at 40 lbs., and now you’re doing 5 sets at 60 lbs.

This kind of thing shows you that all of the hard work you’ve put in to your exercise program really pays off.

And it motivates you to push yourself even more.

Does this work for cardio too?

Of course.

Simply write down mode (bike, running, etc.), duration, distance covered, and heart rate if you want to track that.

I find it helpful to also write down how I felt during my cardio session.

Just like with the weight training, it’s important to keep track and remember exactly how fast you were going, or how many RPM’s on the bike, etc.

It’s good to write how you felt after each session because if you have a session that was too fast or too tough, you can write that down.

This way, right before you do your next workout, you can look back and know that you should maybe slow it down a little this time.

It also works the opposite way as well.

You might look back at your previous workout and see that you have written down “Felt good on Treadmill, next time increase speed from 5.0 to 5.3.

This serves as a motivator as well.

And believe me if you keep increasing the amount of weight you’re lifting and going faster during your cardio sessions, you will lose weight.

And that’s the biggest motivator of all.

What about writing down my food intake?

This is a biggie.

This is extremely important for you to do if you’re serious about losing weight.

But to know what is and isn’t working for you, you have to write down everything you eat each day.

If you only have 2 meals (which of course I do not recommend) then that’s what you put.

If you have a salad with creamy ranch dressing with your dinner, then make sure you write that down.

I recommend that every couple of weeks you have a certified personal trainer or nutritionist look over your food journal.

The person you give it to might notice that you are eating too many carbohydrates, or drinking a lot of soda, or snacking on junk food too close to your bed time, etc.

They will then point this out to you and you can make the necessary adjustments to your eating plan.

Once you find an eating plan that works for you and you are losing weight, you can make sure that this is the way you should eat all of the time.

You’ll also be less likely to eat junk food or eat too much at one sitting.

The reason for this is that you won’t want to have to write it down in your journal.

It will make you feel guilty to write that down.

You’ll feel almost as if you are reporting this to someone each week.

Even if you never show the journal to anyone, writing to yourself can be enough to keep you on the right track.

The most important thing though is to make sure that you write dow
EVERY SINGLE THING that you’ve eaten.

There are a few exceptions.

If one day out of the blue, you happen to pop a few peanuts in your mouth, you don’t have to record that.

If you do that every day though, then that would be something you should write down.

It won’t make sense to keep a food log unless you record all that you’ve eaten.

If you’re not going to do that then don’t waste your time.

It is only by writing everything that you will truly know what you need to change and what you see you are doing well with.

Another important thing to record is the time of day that you eat.

I’ve worked with women before and noticed on many occasions that they don’t eat breakfast.

We all know that you should eat breakfast every morning.

Another thing I see is that a lot of women are spacing their meals too far apart (5 to 6 hours). You will slow down your metabolism this way, and that’s not good if you’re looking to lose weight.

“So how does writing down my meals prevent me from spacing them too far apart?”

You will hopefully first develop an eating plan that has you eating more frequently (5 to 6 small meals a day is optimal for increasing your metabolism and losing weight).

Then as time passes this will become second nature to you.

Then one day when you only write 2 entries in your food journal, it will seem like something’s not right.

And something is definitely not right if you are only eating twice a day.

Another advantage to writing down the times is you can see what time of day is your “weak” point.

Maybe you’ll notice that 3:00 p.m. is your “weak” point and you seem to snack on unhealthy foods.

Or maybe after looking at your journal for the last couple of weeks you notice that you’re eating at 9 or 10 at night.

Whatever the case may be, the bottom line is that by writing down the times of your meals you will be able to pinpoint what time of day is the hardest for you. Or better yet, what time of the day are you eating the most or unhealthiest.

So as you can see, if your goal is to lose weight, you will find it a lot easier to achieve your goal by writing down your exercises (weight lifting and cardio) and your food intake.

I truly believe that writing things down can and will help you lose weight.

And losing weight can be difficult at times; so why not use everything to your advantage?

Don’t wait another day. Write all of it down to lose all of the pounds!