So far, we’ve covered two tips to guarantee health and fitness success:

  1. Put your workout on your schedule first
  2. Change your eating habits

 

And for number three? Journal your workouts and food. You don’t need a fancy or complicated system; a sheet of paper works perfectly fine. When you start writing down what you eat, I’d be willing to bet you’ll have some surprises. Most people think they eat better than they do. One survey of people eating fast food stated, “At least two thirds of all participants underestimated the calorie content of their meals, with about a quarter underestimating the calorie content by at least 500 calories.” And another survey stated that “43% of the 1,234 people surveyed owned up to drinking at least one full-calorie soda, caramel Frappuccino or bubble tea per day. Even among those who said they were dieting, 26% indulged in at least one such drink each weekday, along with 30% of those claiming to be watching the amount of sugar they consumed and 34% who said their diets were ‘very’ or ‘extremely’ healthy.”

Starting today, just write down what you eat. After a week, take a look at how you ate and give yourself a grade. Over the next week, just try to do better than the previous week via small, manageable changes. Remember, you have to first see where you can improve before you can make healthy changes. Knowledge is power!

And you’re going to journal your workouts, too, right? But you’re putting those on the schedule first so you know when they’re going to happen. So when you write down your workouts, you’re just confirming you did what you planned, right? RIGHT? 🙂

Make this the week you start paying more attention to what’s going in so you can take control! You got this!