While a fitness journal helps you keep track of your fitness plan, you might feel overwhelmed with the variety of journals available. We have jotted down essential information in this detailed buyer’s guide to help you choose a fitness journal that can perfectly align with your goals.]
Fitness journals usually contain a section for your goals that you can set on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. This can help keep you motivated along your journey and reminds you that you are working toward a goal that you can achieve.
A fitness journal also allows you to jot down daily or weekly thoughts to help you know how you feel during your training. In some journals, there are even designated pages for writing down how you feel during the day as well as what you plan to do tomorrow. Since the focus is on higher-order subjects, sometimes this space is limited to a few lines or a small box.
Exercise-focused fitness journals can incorporate tables, boxes, or infographics, helping explain the targeted muscles of different exercises and their results. These products can also assist you with keeping track of certain exercises, such as repetitions, sets, and weights. Fitness fanatics who’re building their physiques, as well as people who are newer to training and need a comprehensible summary of workouts, can find these journals quite useful.
The importance of food monitoring and meal planning in your fitness plan can’t be overstated. There are specialist fitness journals that are similar to workout notebooks too, and they can make tracking your daily calorie intake easier. Tables for tracking nutrients, daily food consumption, calorie counts, BMI, and periodical weigh-ins are also common.
The content of a fitness journal dictates its design. A high-quality fitness journal will have graphs, calendars, charts, or tables. Typical fitness journals put an emphasis on recording your ideas and come with specific lines or designated recording boxes.
Plastic spiral bindings are less prone to tearing apart than wire spiral versions. Paperback journals may be harder to write in but they are higher quality and usually last longer.
Depending on your specific fitness goals, fitness journals are usually used for a month to a year. There are also 90-day and 180-day journals available, but these aren’t normally organized according to a calendar, but you can write in the dates as needed.
Fitness trainees, including bodybuilders, marathon runners, and professional athletes use fitness journals to keep themselves motivated to meet their fitness goals. A lot of trainers stand behind using fitness journals because they are an excellent tool for keeping track of all the small and big changes that can affect your progress — and they also help keep players on schedule for competitions.
Fitness journals also come in handy for people who are trying to adjust their weight. These products are useful for keeping track of thoughts and actions that can influence your food intake and fitness level. Many people also keep fitness journals so they can share them with their doctors and psychiatrists during periodic evaluations.
People in rehabilitation programs, particularly those who have had significant surgery, keep fitness journals to track their improvement. They can use them to work with their doctors and physiotherapists to create sensible goals, and these journals can also help track their progress regularly.
The Planet Nutrition’s Fitness Journal makes following a weight loss routine and exercise plan simpler with its detailed and thoughtfully crafted layout. Besides having some daily food and fitness logs for breaking down your main goal, it allows you to set weekly goals and track your weight loss progress. Using the weekly wrap-up sections, you can reflect on your workout and diet efforts and jot down your thoughts for the coming week. You can also help give yourself better sleep by managing your caffeine intake — and this option also allows you to track both aspects of your life to help get faster results. This product’s user-friendly design and detailed instructions earned it the title of the best overall on this list.
This high-quality and detailed journal by Newme has 126 pages and a protective laminated cover for tracking your daily workouts, which can help you to slowly boost your performance in multiple areas. Each workout page has different sections for writing daily stats, workout notes, and logging nutrition details every day. Exercise chart takes up the largest section of the page, providing enough space to note the sets and reps you’ve done, so you can make progress by comparing your stats. Plus, there is a sheet for writing your fitness goals, a list for adding your favorite exercises, a calendar, and a guide about some different exercises.
This affordable option by Zeitgeist Wellness costs roughly the same as some morning coffee and comes loaded with motivational prompts for boosting your confidence. This easy-to-use journal lets you write down your fitness goals and log your daily stats, helping motivate your fitness plan. You can start off by setting your goals and strategies, then come back at the end of the day to write down how you did, allowing you to quickly pinpoint areas if something goes wrong. This product also allows you to record the details of your workout sessions, weight, sleeping patterns, and water intake to ensure that nothing gets in the way of your fitness efforts.
This paperback journal by Pretty Simple consists of 102 pages and can help you maintain your fitness journey. With this option, you can easily log your exercise goals and can see quicker results by sticking to a healthy routine for 90 days. This product helps you set short-term goals, which can help ensure better results by keeping you focused and avoiding cheat days. Each page has some designated space for you to log your sleep, meals, water intake, and exercise. Plus, it’s so easy to use that you probably won’t want to skip using it even for a single day.
Designed with recommendations from fitness experts, this versatile option by Clever Fox includes health and wellness sections so you can have a greater understanding of your activities. Whether you’re finding it hard to follow healthy eating habits, trying to shed some extra weight, or want help with some physical or mental conditions, this wellness journal can work for you. By using positive psychological techniques, this product helps promote taking better control of yourself by promoting healthy habits. The layout is also super user-friendly and includes a top goal page, a monthly calendar, weekly check-ins, a results page, and some daily food logs. The faux leather cover is also made to last and a good choice for vegans.
A: A fitness journal is not a substitute for working with a personal trainer. And if you do work with a fitness instructor, they might advise you to use a journal to adopt healthier habits.
A: Set a timer on your cell phone! It's better to make it the first thing you do in the morning before you get stuck in your daily routine. You can also set a schedule for evenings and write things down before bedtime.
A: It depends on your current weight, your goals, and the amount of time you want to devote to achieving your goal. A fitness journal should have enough pages, and come with some relevant information, to help you record your performance each day.