Lifestyle Journaling

Hey there!

Over the years, I have trained a variety of people from those wanting to get big and strong to people wanting to lose weight as well as those looking to remove pain. Whatever the goal, one of the most effective tools I implement is called “lifestyle journaling”. This refers to recording and assessing the different components of a healthy lifestyle. Lifestyle journaling is this week’s assignment.

TRAINING
NUTRITION
SLEEP
MINDSET

The idea here is when you record your habits, you can adjust them as needed. If you don’t make note of the way you live, you are just shooting in the dark as to what needs to change to see a different result. I hear a lot of the following (from people wanting to lose weight), “I eat so well but I’m still the same size”…OR…(from people wanting to gain weight), “I eat all day long and I just can’t get bigger”. Then when we look more closely at what and how much they are actually eating, it tends to vary greatly from their perception. Lifestyle journaling is extremely empowering. All of a sudden, you actually have the ability to create change instead of just guessing.

WHAT TO RECORD

So what needs to be recorded and what doesn’t? You can go as in depth with this as you want to. The more details…the better picture you get of your overall habits. These are the topics I recommend recording.

• Training
  • How much you move throughout the day
  • Every workout
    • Sets, reps, weights, rest intervals
    • Improved from week before?
    • The way you “felt” during the workout
      • Excited, energetic, motivated, sore, etc
• Nutrition
  • Everything you eat or drink
    • When you eat
    • Portion size
    • Calories, protein, fat and carbohydrates can be broken down and recorded but are less important than whatand whenyou eat
  • Supplements
  • Things you put on your body like lotions
  • How much sunshine you get (Vit D)
  • Quality of bowel movements. *This is a great way to assess digestion
• Sleep
  • Hours and quality of hours
  • Did you dream?
  • Wake rested and recovered?
• Mindset
  • Thought patterns
    • Tendency towards positive or negative thoughts
    • Tendency towards courage or fear
    • Feeling creative and bold?
  • Moods
    • Consistent and steady?
• *Take self pictures regularly as a visual record. This is much more helpful than the scale

Now, don’t get overwhelmed by this. It certainly doesn’t need to be done forever. It just needs to be done at strategic times. I hadn’t kept a lifestyle journal for a while but I currently am because I just started a new program with some specific goals so I want to track my progress. In a perfect world, you would want to keep it for 2-6 weeks. However, you will start to see patterns in about 3 days! Give it a try this week. Decide ahead of time how long you want to do it for (and stick to that) and find those patterns. Then you can adjust accordingly and move towards your goals with super speed!

Progressing towards my dreams,

Iron Will