No matter what your objective is, when you are setting health/diet/fitness goals it is important to come up with a plan to monitor your progress. More importantly it is important to design a plan that is going to work for YOU. You’ve done it before, you know what works for you, and you know what you are capable of. Set yourself up to succeed, make sure your plan is realistic for you, there are no rules. Keep a separate notebook, log in your planner, make notes in your cell phone, or use an online tool, you’ve got plenty of options. The most important thing is to be tracking your progress specific to your goal. For example, if one your goals is increase the amount of water you drink daily, mark how many glasses of water you drink along with logging what you eat every day. There are many different ways to do this . . . use an application on your smartphone, find a website that provides nutrition information (there are hundreds, take the time to find one that you like), or simply use food labels. If your goal doesn’t have anything to do with specific nutritional intake, don’t make logging more tedious than it has to be, keep it simple.
The benefits of monitoring your progress are endless, but here are a few worth noting . . .
Accountability – no one needs to see look at this besides you, so be brutally honest with yourself, it is going to help you reach your goal, and that’s what you really want, right? However, if you know you are someone that needs outside support it may be helpful to team up with a friend to check each other’s progress or join an online community where you can give and receive feedback from others working towards a goal just like you. One of my favorite sites for this is www.peertrainer.com.
Focus – by keeping up with your logging regularly you will notice when you are off track immediately and be able to rectify it before you’ve back-tracked. At the end of the day if you are unhappy with what you see, come up with a plan to make sure that you don’t repeat the same habits.
Awareness – looking back at your habits you may notice certain patterns or triggers related to emotion, timing, location, or people in your life. If you see bad habits recurring try to find a similarity between the times that the habit occurs, identify it and decide what changes you will make to prevent this from happening in the future. Logging will also make you more aware of your portion sizes and help you see where your calories are coming from nutritionally.
Most importantly, as you log and review you will be able to celebrate your success as you continue to work in the right direction towards your goal, use this to motivate yourself and keep moving forward!
