A journal entry every day can help you keep the stress (and the extra lbs!) away!
Weight loss can be a stress-inducing process, and everyone copes with that stress differently. Unfortunately, for some people, the stress of trying to lose weight becomes counter-productive to your actual weight loss efforts, as the increased appetite and cravings induced by stress make it even harder to reach your weight loss goals.
Learning how to manage your stress more effectively during your weight loss program can help with your weight loss efforts by allowing you to have increased focus on reaching your weight loss goals.
Journaling the Stress Away
There is a healthier way to deal with the stress of trying to lose weight. You don’t have to wait for January 1st to come around on the calendar to reset your efforts with a few new healthy habits. Every day is a great day for a mental reset. Journaling can help you with this process.
You can start a journal by:
- Keeping a notebook in your purse or backpack.
- Keeping a log on your phone.
- Opening a file on your desktop, or keeping a pad of paper at your office desk.
The most effective journalers are those who are able to turn journaling into a daily ritual, one that helps them to process new stressors and deal with issues in a healthy way.
The Benefits of Journaling
Keeping a journal helps improve your personal awareness about your food and exercise habits, and helps you keep track of precisely what is going in your body. By writing down everything you eat, a journal encourages you to become more deliberate in your eating and exercise practices. Just think: mindless eating can easily be kicked to the curb by the awareness that you will be logging every cookie that you take off of that platter.
A journal doesn’t need to be anything fancy, a simple notebook suffices perfectly. There are even endless different apps out there that will help you keep an e-log of what you’re eating, how often you’re exercising, and different moods or events that you experience and are worth noting. If you’ve never kept a journal before, challenge yourself to try it for just 30 days and then look back and evaluate the process. You may be surprised by how much a simple task can help you regain control of your diet and exercise habits.