Journaling is FUNdamental!

Well this week started out with a bang! Did you watch the eclipse? Honestly, I didn’t really care but then I got sucked into the hype and went outside during work to check it out. People were going crazy over this thing! It was pretty cool, but still! I didn’t think it was hysteria worthy. People were talking Zombies, Vampires……I mean…..let’s get real here.  The last one I saw I was maybe 6 or 7 years old and I can remember making our own viewers at daycare and all going out to watch it. I don’t remember all the craze surrounding it though. I dunno. Those were the good days. No bills, no responsibilities. Calgon…take me away!

You wanna know what I’m obsessed with right now? Of course you do! Well, I am 100% obsessed with the Mind Pump Podcast. I recently found out about these guys through the Girls Gone WOD podcast, which is also amazing and you should check them out.  Since I’m late to the Mind Pump game I have over 500 episodes to binge listen to. It’s awesome! Lots of great health, fitness and business information in a fun, non-boring way. You should go check them out on iTunes!

I am also obsessed with dried mango. No sugar added, plain dried mango. It’s delish! I seriously can make myself sick off of it. I could easily binge eat mango as I binge listen to Mind Pump. While dried fruit, sans the sugar, is a great snack and source of carbohydrates nothing is beneficial to you in excess. BUT IT’S SO GOOD! Luckily, over the past month I have started tracking my food, again. This has helped me dial in my mango craze. I bought a cute little spiral notebook and I write every meal or snack I have into that notebook. I haven’t kept a food journal in a long time. Since my Weight Watchers days really. I have logged my food in an app here and there but I haven’t been consistent in a long time. Since beginning journaling this time around I realized just how much my portions had started to go all over the place! I also realized how much I missed it. Yes, you read that correctly, I missed food journaling. It’s almost therapeutic to me in a way. It offers me a place to take accountability for my nutrition and better understand how certain foods make me feel. And it’s a great place for me to celebrate my nutritional successes.

Journaling can feel overwhelming and time consuming at first. When I journal I like to physically write everything down. For most people, it’s easier and more convenient to log their food in an app. It’s really whatever your preference is. For me, the app allowed what I ate to be out of sight and out of mind.

No matter how you prefer to journal it’s just important to journal. Why you ask? (If you didn’t ask just go with it ok……just pretend. Thanks!) Journaling creates awareness of what you’re eating. Once you start journaling you may realize you dine out more than you thought, you don’t eat enough vegetables, you are consuming more sodium than you were aware of. Maybe you aren’t consuming enough nutrients or you’re consuming to much of a nutrient.  That’s what happened to me. I was consuming way too much protein. LOVE PROTEIN…NOM NOM NOM. So, my body was just hanging on to the excess and I wasn’t leaning out. No matter how little food I ate or how much I worked out it wouldn’t budge. Since tracking again I’ve been able to even out the kinks and I’m seeing results.

The great thing about food journaling is if you write it down it happened, you ate that. So, if you don’t want to write it down don’t eat it! If you can keep that mantra in the back of your mind you will see your food journal and your nutrition improve steadily.

* My Fitness Pal

* Fitday.com 

Now, journaling isn’t just for food. You can use journaling in other areas as well. It’s also a great idea to journal your workouts. It will help you keep track of your working days and your rest days. You can track the amount of weight you lifted so you can continue to improve. You can also track your cardio. A fitness journal, like a food journal, can help you see your imbalances. Are you doing too much cardio? Too little cardio? Can you increase the weight you are lifting? What areas are you weak in? Once you are aware of your imbalances you can adjust your fitness routine to correct them. You may also realize you need to take more time for restorative exercises such as yoga or meditation.

* Bodybuilding.com

* My Fitness Journal 

Although tracking your food and exercise is a beneficial practice, journaling to reflect has an enormous benefit as well. I’m not saying you need to turn this into a nightly, Dear diary session, but taking time to journal about what’s going on with YOU can have several benefits.

Journaling can:

·         Help you clarify your thoughts and feeling

·         Reduce Stress

·         Evokes Mindfulness – which is great when you’re
           working on healthy eating and exercise!

·         Increase creativity

·         Promote healing

Sometimes, if I’m feeling particularly sad, angry, anxious, whatever I will just write or type. I’ll pull up a blank word doc and just put my fingers to the keyboard. I‘ll put all of my feelings out on paper and then re- read them. I don’t usually save it because just the act of putting it out there helps me mentally and relieves a weight I have been carrying around. Re-reading it helps me see areas where I may be over reacting, under reacting or what I need to just let go of. The ones I do save I go back and read from time to time. They often make me laugh! Why did I let something like that upset me?! LOL.

If you’re feeling stuck in your nutrition, exercise or in your day to day, give journaling a try. You may be surprised at the results.