Setting and acheiving your goals
Step 2: Create your areas for success
What does a great journal involve? That's really up to you. Everyone has their own exercise, nutrition, and sleep requirements. It's important to honestly assess your lifestyle and make note of the areas that can use improvement.
The following are suggested topics to include in your fitness diary.
•Nutrition-- Record what you eat for breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks, as well as beverages. Make note of unhealthy choices and plan for healthier ones. (Pack a healthy lunch instead of ordering fast food.)
•Water intake-- Make a water checklist and schedule to drink up throughout the day.
•Workouts-- Write the type of exercise, duration, and intensity of each session.
•Sleep-- Make note of the time you go to bed and when you rise. Then write about how you feel when you wake up.
•Holistic/Wellness-- Learn the relaxing art of meditation with help from a book, video, or tape on guided meditation. Record efforts to heal your mind and bring peace into your day.
Step 3: Take the good, take the bad, and adapt
Use your journal to identify the areas you need to work on. For example, if you continually feel tired when you wake, analyze sleep patterns. Maybe you need to exercise more, maybe you need to exercise less, maybe you're not eating enough, you're dehydrated or you're not eating the right foods that provide energy.
The key to keeping an effective journal is having it accessible to you and to be consistent. Do not skip the bad days. Analyze the circumstances surrounding those failures to avoid repeating them.
Michele Drake is a Toronto-based fitness consultant. She is certified with a long list of associations including the Canadian Personal Trainers Network, CanFitPro and the Canadian Society for Exercise Physiology. She is also the founder and creator of a pre and postnatal fitness regime Healthy Me, Healthy You.
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