Last week we talked about starting a walking program to help improve your health and lower your overall long term care costs. This week I’d like to talk about keeping an exercise journal. An exercise journal will help you chart what exercise you are getting, what milestones you reach, when you get injured, and how you feel about various types of exercise routines that you try.
The first step in exercise journaling is to pick a journaling style to use. Some people enjoy writing in a diary style exercise journal, while others prefer an electronic journal. If price is a concern, then a simple $1 notebook will work just fine as a journal. If you would like a more decorative journal, then you can find bound journals with blank pages at bookstores and stationary stores. Another option is to use a calendar as your journal. If you prefer a digital format for your journal then you can create a blog to chart your progress, you can create a website that is dedicated to your journey for fitness, or you can simply use your word processing software to create a savable journal.
When writing an entry you will want to first make sure that you create a date & time stamp. This stamp will include the day of your journal entry, when you exercised, how long you exercised and where you exercised. Next you will want to write a quick description of what you did. For example, you may have walked 1 mile, road your bike 5 miles or completed a 30 minute aerobic class. Finally, you will want to express how you feel about your work out. You can include information about your emotional state, how your body is responding the work out, or whether you felt energetic or sluggish. Basically, anything that you want to talk about can be added to this final section.
Exercise journaling is a great way to not only chart how your exercise program is progressing, as well as for identifying what is working for you and what is not working. This information can be used to help you identify ways to improve your long term health prognosis, and lower your ltc health care insurance costs. Return next week to the Long Term Care Review blog for information on setting fitness goals.
