How to carry a health journal (& why)


How well would you rate your general health – and how confident about your answer are you? If you keep a health diary, you can give a clearer overview of how your lifestyle decisions affect how you feel and your general well-being to give a necessary boost.

I am firmly convinced that things like much vegetables, enough sleep and hydrated stay for everyone. However, everyone is different and there are many variations within a healthy paradigm.

For example, some people may need more healthy carbohydrates or more sleep, while others may have to optimize their magnesium or vitamin -D levels through dietary supplements or nutrition.

If you or one of your children have a medical medical history of non -diagnosed problems, a Health Journal Miracles can work miracles when uncovering hidden triggers or unhealthy patterns. It is a fabulous tool that will only serve with a little practice and commitment in the end.

Why should I keep a health journal?

If you or someone in your family suffer from unknown allergic reactions, sudden changes in mood, constipation or other health problems, it is particularly important to pursue your health with a daily diary. You can decide what is important to include your journal entries, and who knows – it can help you discover a hidden health problem or even accidentally create new healthy habits!

There are many advantages to keep a Health Journal. Here are my seven best reasons for starting your Health Journal:

  1. You can reveal lifestyle patterns: If you keep an eye on everyday health information such as nutrition and sleep, you can take certain causes and effects into account that you have never thought about. For example, you can find that you do not sleep well before going to bed, without a magnesium salt bath, or that your rashes are watering when drinking eight glasses.
  2. You could discover aggressive foods: If you have a food journal, you will rather find out which foods cause allergy symptoms, colon disorders, skin problems or other problems. If you have a reaction, return to your recording and see what the common factors are. Check your diary to see if you have eaten gluten, dairy products, sugar, nuts, eggs, shellfish or other common triggers.
  3. You will know what has to change: There is a reason why bodybuilders and fitness professionals keep a detailed recording of their meals and training sessions. It all depends on the fact that you cannot measure or improve what you cannot measure, and you cannot duplicate success if you don’t know what works. If you use a tracker to take your food, movement and current health information into account, you can get realistic measures for what is best suited for you and your family so that you can use the right habits and hand it over.
  4. You will stop falling into a bridge: Journaling helps you to notice when food or lifestyle factors are misleading in your health plan. Perhaps a handful of chocolate chips leads to food, or the next day a lack of sleep promotes badly. If you know this in advance, you can prioritize certain lifestyle selection to keep you up to date. Bonus: Apart from the fact that it does not get into a letter, it could even help with your weight loss goals!
  5. You remain responsible: Even if you have only a few important things every day, write down things gives you a solid reason to stay on the right track. If you really want to remain accountable, keep a diary in a public place so that others can encourage and support you on the way.
  6. You will see how lifestyle and diet factors mix: Diet plays an enormous role in the quality of your sleep, skin and intestinal habits. Similarly, lifestyle factors such as stress, hormones and movement play an enormous role in the way much food your body longs. By persecution of diet and lifestyle decisions, you can determine which changes are most important to you in order to become your own health.
  7. It can help doctors inform: You don’t have to analyze all of this information yourself. Take your health journal to your doctor’s appointments so that you can help you to determine the causes of medical problems such as allergies, psychological health problems, certain heart disease, high blood pressure, chronic diseases and much more. It will also help you to see objectively over time how certain changes affect your health. I regularly share my steadymd doctor.

What to grasp

The more information you record in your Health Journal, the better. If this seems overwhelming, start with a high degree of few important aspects of your health and then drill down to specify things about things that you believe that you could reveal more information over time.

There are all kinds of things that you can write down in your daily diary. Here are some things that I felt most helpful to contain:

  • Diet. Start with a simple list of all foods you eat every day. If you want to become specific, you can also insert the quantities of food, what time you have eaten or even categorize them according to food (such as meat, vegetables, etc.). This can help you to see high-ranking patterns at a glance-for example if you get enough protein.
  • Vitamins. Take up all the supplements that you take and take the days in which you forgot to take your regularly planned vitamins. In fact, you could give you days when you forget to take certain medication, you may give you a necessary insight that you would otherwise not have received!
  • Water intake. We all know that the hydration for your body is very important at a cellular level. Keep an overview of how many ounces of water you drink every day to see how the fluid intake affects your health. You can use smartphone apps such as Daily Water Tracker, Hydro Coach or Waterminder.
  • Sleep. You can keep this super easy to record when you go to bed, when you wake up in the morning, but did you know that you can also record the quality of sleep? Certain apps, such as sleep cycle, can be deeply able to set themselves up how well they slept, regardless of whether they have snapped or not, and more to help them understand more about what has happened while in were passed out for the last eight hours.
  • Exercise. You don’t have to go to the gym to record your training – even though it never hurts. Note every strenuous activity that you carried out every day, from a rapid walk to the aggressive cleaning of your bathroom. All of these hours of physical activity add up faster than you think!
  • Disease, allergies, skin changes or reactions. Now that you have recorded everything you did, it is time to take a look at what it is. Above all, take an inventory about how you feel at the end of the day. Did you suffer from allergies? Has your IBS turned up? Was your eczema more manageable than usual? Write it down.
  • Pain or fatigue. Be sure to note unusual pain points over the course of your day and write down all feelings of tiredness or brain fog. It is not a bad idea to give yourself a 1-10 number of points how vigilant and vigorous you feel every day.
  • Mixtures. It is easy to overlook your mental health – so it is particularly important to pay attention to these small changes in the mood and emotions. You could help you reveal some interesting patterns about sudden feelings of fear or sadness.
  • Hormones. Your mood is strongly dictated by her hormones. So set this information. Note where you are in your monthly cycle (I recommend this app for it) or in which pregnancy phase you have reached to get an idea of ​​what is hormonal on a certain day.
  • Stool habits. Do you go twice a day or did you feel in the last three? While there are dozens of articles on the Internet about what your Poop says about you, all you have to do is record whether you had a bowel movement or not, and everything that was not common for you.

This is how they make journaling easier

This may seem confusing, but don’t worry – you certainly do not have to record all the above suggestions. In addition, you don’t just have to rely on your memory or carry your diary with you continuously. Dozens of smartphone apps can help you to track your food intake, sleep, your fluid intake and your movement. Just carry out a Google search and take a look at the best rated there.

If you haven’t journaled beforehand, I would suggest trying it for a few weeks. A simpler way to deal with the habit could even be to start with a simple gratitude journal and develop for health persecution. You could be amazed at this daily habit.

Note: I think that a health journal is an astonishing self-care tool that you may have easily overlooked, but it should never replace medical appointments or serve as a complete diagnosis. Remember to speak to your doctor to get a personalized medical advice based on your Health Journal and your entire family history.

Learn more

This article was made by Dr. Lauren Jefferis medically checked, which was certified in internal medicine and pediatrics. As always, this is not a personal medical advice and we recommend that you speak to your doctor or to work with a doctor at Steadymd.

Do you keep a diary? What did it help you to discover yourself?