When I first lost weight before I used a calorie counting journal. By doing this I also lost 30+ pounds. Though over the years, 10 plus, there has been some changes within them. As Ive aged I focus on certain things more so than others. Before it was just simple, count the calories. Exercise and that was it. Now I have included more things spiritually like how I feel that day, was I struggling, things like that. Only because there are more things I think I should be focusing on, Even self care or putting creams on my face. Habits I need to build that I no longer could on my own but keeping track is that much better.

I know what a lot of people are probably thinking. Why do you write things out? I write things out because if I use an app (which works great for millions of people!) It never really “sinks in”. It makes me feel like a robot imputing data and I never really am aware about what I put into it. By writing it out, taking the time to do so, it makes things really click that I am aware about what I am doing. Maybe I have an off day and I’m writing longer than normal. Maybe I am having a great day and it goes super well and I have decorated the page. It really just depends. I prefer this way because it works for me!

I dont buy fancy books either. I buy a simple plain notebook and write my own outlines within it. I talk about how much I love notebooks in the blog here however when it comes to me and notebooks if I mess up, which to me is skipping days etc, I always feel like I need a fresh start. If I was buying notebooks pre-written I would be wasting even more more money than I do now on those things! Not to mention, even pre-writing the pages is helping to serve the purpose of also keeping my hands busy when I am sitting around in the evenings. I write a few pages or a few weeks worth of outlines and keeping my hands occupied.

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I also keep track of my exercise in there. And when I say that It could be anything. Maybe I spend an hour really cleaning certain things in my home or gardening or maybe shoveling snow in the winter time or something. I try to keep track of activities even dancing that I do without it having to be exercise in the typical way one would think. Sometimes I dont give myself credit when I should and this is one of those things!

I also put notes at the bottom in case something happened. Maybe we went out for a dinner and I ate over my calories so this was a way for me to note why I may have eaten a lot more than I would. When I have days where we may order take out or maybe we are eating in a restaurant those are worth noting like all of them however a reason is good to see if we are ordering too much.

One of my toxic things about doing this is that I have 2 problems. One of those problems is that when I miss a few days of counting or tracking I have a tendency to stop writing anything down and I leave the book alone. I feel like because I missed a day and it wasn’t filled out perfectly that I am wasting my time and that is not even realistic in my way of thinking. I need to remember that there may be days here and there that I dont really want to fill it out or I forgot or maybe at the end of the day it was just too much. Life is not perfect but that is no reason to disregard anything that I have dont that could have been progress. The second one is that when I do fall into the not writing things down behavior I do a really big deal out of a minor inconvenience and I try to start over as in I wont use the same scribbler. I will re-write the same things I had in the other book and use a new book. But if I dont have any that I really want ot use I will physically go out or order on amazon a new book and write things. I need to stop this mindset. In reality I could be making millions of excuses and I need to just stop and do it for real this time.

You can see some examples here of how I fill out my scribbler. You can also see that I do post daily what I end up eating and what I enjoy more like a daily vlog on tiktok. I want to start that because I feel like the minor editing I can do on the app would be a great thing for me to start doing to occupy my hands again at the end of the night. Plus who doesn’t love to see a feel good story about losing weight. And another way or me to be held accountable is great for me too. I am really looking forward to finally feeling like I am doing something for myself!