In my newsletter this week, I expressed why you need to keep a food and activity journal.

Today, I’m expanding that idea a little more and showing you how to do it the “write” way.

Keeping a food and activity journal has several benefits. One of the greatest benefits comes in helping you to lose more weight and keep it from coming back.
Here are some other benefits:

Tracks Your Progress: You can instantly access your starting point. You can also track your successes and challenges; and later go back through the circumstances that moved you to stay on the program or temporarily get sidetracked.

Reduces Stress: Writing is therapeutic. You can use your journal to express what you are feeling each time you eat something whether good or bad. The act of writing it down allows you to process the situation better and also get it out in the open so you are better able to deal with it.

Keeps You Focused: The very routine or habit of writing down your food intake and daily workout activities means that you are making time for you. When you set aside “me time,” you are saying to yourself that you are worthy of this process of making yourself better.

Gets You Organized: In order for your weight loss program to be successful, you have to be committed to following the plan. To follow the plan, you must prepare ahead of time and consistently do the right thing over and over. Keeping track of all this in your journal gives you a sense of accomplishment that you are doing all that you can to be successful.

You Gain a Better Understanding of Self: Whether or not you re-read your journal, you gain benefits from just writing down your story and your thoughts. Through your writing, your experience becomes alive and real and you begin to gain a better understanding of how you are changing your own life, one day at a time.

Now that you know why you need to keep a journal, here are some suggestions on how to do it and what to use:

• • Register for the Online Weight Loss Tracker, its free. Click here to get started.
• • Create a scrapbook: Use your imagination to express your feelings through images, graphics and other positive symbols.
• • Use a composition or loose leaf notebook
• • Create a spreadsheet in Microsoft Excel or some other software

Whichever way you choose, don’t hesitate, just do it.

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