Logging Your Fitness and Diet Plan
Fitness and health experts from around the world promote the benefit of tracking your progress and even set backs. At first glance you may wonder what all the fuss is about.
The truth is there is good reason for keeping a log. You need to know what you’ve accomplished and where you’ve fallen short so you can make improvements in those areas. Here’s how you can lose weight with the help of a fitness and diet log.
Know Where You Are Right Now
Most people think they’re pretty aware of how much they eat each day. The honest truth is that unless you actually track what you’re eating, you really have no idea. Even people who think they’re eating really healthy will be surprised how much they eat. The same holds true for calories burned. You can exercise each day and think you’re burning hundreds of calories, but do you really know?
It may sound tedious but there is tremendous value to knowing where you are right now. When you know exactly how much you eat and how much you burn, you can make changes to your life that will have results. Measuring and using portion control may seem like a pain in the butt, especially if you’re not in the habit of doing it. But, doing this for at least a month will help give you more accurate numbers of actual portion sizes and help you track everything much easier.
Know Where You Are Going
When you consistently track how many calories you consume and burn each day, you can make adjustments to your lifestyle to support your goals. If you don’t know the information then the changes you’re making may not have the impact you desire. Even something as small as 100 extra calories a day can affect your success. Some people don’t count calories and that’s OK, these health and fitness trackers keep track of a lot more.
Tracking your diet and fitness information daily also helps support you to make healthy choices. For example, if you’re out with friends at happy hour, you can look at your journal and know how many appetizers and drinks you can have and still stay on track. You’re armed with information to make intelligent decisions about your health and fitness.
Tracking Made Easy or NOT
Today there are more tracking applications and tools than you can imagine. There is the easy, but perhaps cumbersome, book journal. With this type of system you simply write down what you eat and drink, and your exercise, and do calculations manually.
Technology has made keeping track a lot easier. There are fantastic applications for Smartphones and the iPod. You can also find good programs for your computer. There are even applications where you can find the calorie, carb, sodium and other numbers for most menu items at major restaurants.
If you have a smart phone, this may be your best option. It’s portable and goes everywhere with you. It makes tracking easy when you are out and about.
Combine these, often free and easy-to-use applications, with tools like pedometers and other fitness tracking devices (like I mentioned in this post) so you have access to all of the health and lifestyle information you need to know to lose weight.
If you’re presently not using any journal or tracking system, find one that works for you. Spend a week or two simply tracking the information. Then, armed with information, you can begin to make changes to lose weight and get healthy.
It may take awhile to find a system that works for you. Don’t give up the quest too soon. I personally struggle big time when it comes to using tracking apps. I get frustrated SO easily when trying to input what foods I’m eating and keeping track of it all. I used to keep an actual written journal which I personally think is a little easier.
Becoming frustrated and giving up over this quest might make it easier for us to give up on our goals altogether. We have to push through this process if we want to be successful.
Best Health and Fitness Trackers
Here are a few sites that look at and review the best health and fitness trackers out there on the market.
27 mobile health tools for tracking food
Top iPhone and Android Weight Loss Apps
Online resources for tracking your food intake
I personally have accounts at Daily Burn, MyFitnessPal, Spark People and Fit Day (and probably others too). I have to decide on one and just go with it.
What is your favorite health and fitness tracker?
Leave a Reply