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By now you should know that to succeed in living healthily, we’ve to make a real lifestyle change. It’s not just about forcing ourselves to behave a certain way for 21 weeks and then revert to our past habits after that. That does nothing at all.

Our goal here is to make healthy living part and parcel of our everyday living. Be it drinking water, being conscious of the nutritional value of the foods we’re eating, knowing our daily energy expenditure, eating in line with our daily caloric needs, knowing our ideal meal plans, sticking to our ideal meal plans, going grocery shopping, exercising, eating 3-9 fruits/veg a day, going caffeine free, eating consciously, having a good posture, flossing our teeth, etc – all these are habits that we’re sticking to for life. Things like our ideal meal plans, our TDEE, our ideal grocery lists and nutritional value of what we eat are important information that we’ll always be accessing every day/every other day.

Hence, it’s important that we have our own health journal that contains all these information to help us live our healthiest life ever. We’d refer to this journal whenever we are planning our next meal, whenever we need a reminder of our vision for our healthy life.

Hence this week, we’re creating our Health Journal

Step 1: Pick a format for your health journal

You can use hard copy or soft copy for your Health Journal. If you’re using hard copy, you can pick any Journal lying around the house or even buy a Journal especially for this. Your soft copy format can be any processing software of your preference – word document, excel, or even PowerPoint if you like.

The benefits of soft copy are that you can easily edit/format it, while for a hard copy you can refer to it even when you’re not at your computer. Either way, use whatever works best for you!

Step 2: Fill up your Journal

It’s up to you on how you want to structure your Journal and what you want to include in it. Everyone’s Journal should be customised/personalised to meet his/her needs. I recommending starting off with these sections:

• Healthy Living Goal / Vision (Pre-Work)
• Action Plan to achieve your healthy living plan (Pre-Work)
• Learnings and Insights that will help you succeed in your plan ahead (Week 7, Week 14)
• Calorie List (Week 2)
• TDEE/Caloric Needs (Week 3) – So you know how much calories you need to be consuming and if you are meeting your target. This helps you in your design of your ideal meal plan.
• Ideal Meal Plans (Week 4)
• Review of Current status vs. Actual (Week 7, Week 14) – To review your progress in your healthy living plan, identifying the key areas that worked and key areas that didn’t. This way you’re continually improving and moving forward toward living your healthiest life ever.

Here are other sections you can include in your Journal too. Not all of them will be relevant to you – pick and choose what you want to include.

• Ideal habits – A list of the habits you want to cultivate in your daily life, such as drinking water, eating 5-9 fruits/veg, meditating, waking up early, exercising, etc.
• Daily Tracking Plan – To help you track if you’re sticking to your habits. If you haven’t kicked the habit for the day, make sure to do it before you sleep.
• Food Journal – Helps you to track what you’re eating so you know if you’re over/under eating.
• Favourite Recipes – To keep track of your favourite recipes, and even create your own!
• Shopping/Grocery List (Week 5) – Whenever you go grocery shopping, use this list as a check on what items you need to buy/stock up
• Exercise Plan (Week 8) – Your exercise regime, caloric expenditure for each exercise, and your progress in your current exercises.
• Other sections – Are there any sections that you’d like to include?

KEEP DOING ALL THE THINGS YOU HAVE LEARNT in the 21 weeks

All the best.