One of the most powerful, yet underestimated tools of nursing wellness is writing in a weight loss journal. Your journal serves as a permanent record of the highs, lows and in-between moments. This journal will help you make it all the way to a successful end. Unfortunately, many people do not utilize this amazing tool because they are not aware of its power. Read on, nurses, to learn the benefits of keeping a weight loss journal, so you can start your own.
Table of Contents
Benefit #1: Accountability
Accountability can be the driving force that propels you to reach your weight loss goals. Realizing that you will have to account to someone else about what you’ve been doing, or not doing, can push you to stay on track. Writing in your journal provides you with an accountability factor, even if you’re the only one reading it.
Benefit #2: Empowerment
Have you ever weighed yourself after a week of “being good” only to see the numbers stay the same or even go up? At this point, you’re racking your brain going over the past to figure out where you went wrong and what needed to be tweaked. Your journal will reveal exactly what you did or did not do. Reviewing this information will cause you to feel empowered to make changes to your lifestyle that will actually work, for the long haul.
Benefit #3: Validation
Losing weight doesn’t mean drudgery or having to eat like a rabbit. You can enjoy your workouts and eat great tasting foods. At the end of the day, what counts is how you look and feel in your clothes. When you start to see changes in your appearance, you can attribute it to the weight loss plan you have been following. Using your journal as proof, you now have a written track record of what you did to achieve nursing wellness. Now that’s true validation!
Benefit #4: Education
All the prepping, planning and implementation that goes into making your weight loss journey a success doesn’t stop when you reach your goal weight. You’ve also gained knowledge about yourself and your body along with what works and what doesn’t. You have learned how to lose weight, but more importantly, you’ve learned how to keep it off. All you need to do now is take the lessons you’ve learned from writing in your journal and tweak them to apply to everyday life. What a success you are!