Top Metabolism

How To Keep A Metabolism Journal

April 24th, 2007 Subscribe To Our Feed

Keeping a metabolism journal is an excellent way to help you keep track of both your calorie in-take and your level of physical activity. For many people, keeping such a journal serves as an effective motivational tool and it also helps one better determine how certain eating habits either lead to lower metabolism, or result in excessive calorie in-take. A metabolism journal helps one visualize the combined effects of exercise and calorie consumption, making it possible to manage the number of calories consumed and burned each day.

Tips On How To Start Your Metabolism Journal

Before you start writing in your journal, use an online metabolism calculator to determine how many calories your body burns each day. This calculator will ask you to confirm your age, gender, height, weight and level of physical activity. Once you have an estimate, mark this number at the top of the first page in the notebook to be used for your metabolism journal. In order to lose weight, your goal should be to consume approximately 500 calories less than the amount your body burns in a single day.

Once you have figured out how many calories you burn each day, divide each page in your journal into two columns. On the left-hand side, record your daily calories in-take by actually writing down all your meals and snack and the approximate number of calories in each. All food products sold in North America must be accompanied by nutritional information, usually found on the back label, which also lists the number of calories per serving. At the end of each day, calculate your total calorie in-take and record the grand total at the bottom of the left-hand column.

On the second column, list all your physical activities for that day, along with the amount of time you spent on each. These do not only include hours spent lifting heavy weights at the gym, but absolutely all physical activity, including walking, jogging, mowing the law, shoveling snow and climbing stairs. You should list all activities, including those that seem mundane. There are a number of internet resources that will provide you with charts as to how many calories you can burn doing each activity and will often even include the number of calories most people burn while reading, performing house chores, writing essays and performing mental tasks. Record the total amount at the bottom of the column.

Why Is A Metabolism Journal Effective?

At the end of each day, the recordings in your metabolism journal should be able to tell you how many calories you took in and approximately how many you burned in single day. You may notice that you are, in fact, burning more calories than previously determined by a metabolism calculator as you begin to change your eating habits and increase your physical activity. A metabolism journal can be a very effective diet tool as it helps keep you accountable for what you consume and for your lifestyle. Recording your calorie in-take also helps you better realize what you are consuming and how this is affecting your health. Above all, keeping a metabolism journal makes you much more conscious of what you eat and often leads people to lead healthier lifestyles.