What we want to track about our diet and fitness depends on our goals, our patience, and our tools. Olympians need to pay more detailed attention than the rest of us. However, most of us could benefit from tracking at least these five things:
1. Sleep. Enough sleep is crucial to workout performance, recovery, and even weight loss.
2. Food. People who track their food tend to lose more weight than people who don’t. There is also the I-don’t-want-to-write-that-down-so-I-better-not-eat-it effect. A lot of us eat far more calories than we think we do and we need to keep a log as a reality check. This can be a pencil-and-paper thing or there are lots of apps out there to make it easy.
3. Water. Dehydrated people are unhappy people. They also can’t work out as well as those of us who keep hydrated.
4. Workouts. This can be as simple as a checkoff or a detailed list of what kind of workout it was, how long it was, what weights and reps were involved, etc. In general, it is best to start small to get in the habit. However, if we have a goal of reducing our mile time, for example, we need to track that to see our progress.
5. Measurements. This can be as simple as tracking weight, or we can add circumference measurements (most common are chest, waist, hips, upper arm, thigh, and calf), body fat percentage (if we have a scale or other device to calculate it for us), BMI (which is a math problem based on height and weight), or any other measurements we think we might want to know about. This allows us to see our progress.
Try it and see how it works!
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