How to Create an Effective Health Journal

A personal health journal is a record of anything related to your health. It can include your medical records, a history of your symptoms or illnesses, a list of medications you take, your food diary, or anything else you think is essential to track. 

Your health journal can be a place to keep a systematic, objective collection of all of your health records. It can also be a place where you work toward your health goals and reflect on your health. It can include numbers, lists, images, thoughts, and feelings. You can privately record your opinions about yourself or your health so that you can be brutally honest. 

Starting a health journal can be a big task, but it’s a great way to keep track of your medical information and your health progress. There are many benefits to journaling about your health. And with dozens of topics regarding health, a journal will help you stay organized. 

The best thing about a health journal? There are so many angles! You can use it to record health and fitness, keep track of your doctor’s visits, record triggers for physical and mental conditions, and so much more.

Keep reading to learn all about keeping a health journal.

Benefits of a Health Journal

A health journal is an effective way to keep track of your health. If you regularly record information about your health, you can look back on your records and make important discoveries. You can see what medications or vitamins work for you, what time of year you tend to get sick, and whether there are any patterns in your unexplained symptoms.

This information can be especially valuable if you suffer from a chronic illness or chronic pain. Some obvious lifestyle choices help manage your condition. But everyone is different, and things that trigger someone else’s pain or illness won’t be the same for you. It can be hard to know what causes a flareup in your symptoms or what helps alleviate them. Keeping detailed records can help.  

Recording Daily Health Stats

Keeping track of everything you eat, how you sleep, how much activity you get, and other factors will allow you to notice patterns over time. Knowing these statistics can make a big difference in your overall health. 

Create and Track Goals

With a health journal, you can make health goals and keep track of your progress as you work toward them. The information you record and the patterns you notice will help you make changes that improve your health. Instead of guessing about what choices benefit or don’t benefit you, you’ll know precisely how every health-related decision you make will affect your life. You’ll be able to duplicate your results week after week, which will help you reach your goals faster.

Diet and Fitness Recording

If you have diet or fitness goals in mind, your journal is a great way to identify triggers that make you fall off the wagon. It may seem impossible to avoid falling off the wagon, but it doesn’t happen for no reason. Maybe you snack too much during the day after eating a sugary breakfast. Maybe you slack off on your workout routine when it’s cold outside. Perhaps you always overeat after not getting enough sleep. You can learn to identify and avoid your pitfalls with your health journal. 

Have a Resource for Your Doctor

Take your health journal to the doctor’s appointment. If you’re feeling sick, you can give your doctor detailed information about when your symptoms started. Your doctor could even take a look at your journal and possibly notice a pattern in your symptoms that you didn’t see. Giving your doctor more information will help your doctor give you better care. 

Take Control of Your Healthcare

The best benefit of a health journal is that it lets you take control of your healthcare. You’ll know everything you need to know about your health, and you’ll feel in control of your health choices. 

What Should You Write in Your Journal

There are many health topics you can track in your journal. You could keep records of a comprehensive journal with all your medical information, or you could choose to focus on a few aspects of your health that are the most important or relevant to you. 

Whatever you decide to focus on in your journal, there are a few things that everyone should record. Write down any allergies or medical conditions you currently have. You may also want to write down all past medical conditions, when they occurred, and how long they lasted. 

If you’ve ever had any injuries, surgeries, or hospitalizations, record the timeline of your recovery and a brief description of what happened. You should also record any diseases or illnesses that have affected your immediate family members.

If you want to keep a more detailed record of your medication use, keep a list of all medicines, vitamins, and supplements you’re currently taking or have taken in the past. Record your start and stop dates, dosage, and the regularity. Why you take those supplements or medicines may help also. If you start taking a new medication, write down any changes you feel. 

You can also use your health journal to track your sleep. Every morning record what time you went to sleep the night before and what time you woke up. You can also add an update in the evening about how energized or tired you felt during the day. 

Women might benefit from keeping track of information about their menstrual cycles. You can record premenstrual symptoms and the start and end dates of your period. You may notice a correlation between specific foods you eat, physical activity, or sleep patterns, and your symptoms. 

Nutritional Intake

If one of your health goals is related to your weight or diet improvement, your health journal is a place to record what you eat. It’s up to you how you log your foods, and the best option depends on your goals. 

You could write down the foods and quantities, or you could keep track of the calories, sodium, macronutrients, or other nutritional information. It is helpful to write down what time where who accompanied you and how you felt. 

A journal can give you lots of insight into your eating habits or behaviors that you may not notice otherwise. 

For fitness goals, you can use your health journal to record your physical activity or workouts each day. Write down what you did for exercise, how strenuous it was, and how long the workout lasted. You can look back on your progress over time and see your improvement, which is very motivating. 

Tips for Health Journaling

Before you set up your health journal, try to get a copy of all your medical records from your doctor. You can include these at the beginning of your journal and update them every time you go to the doctor. 

Organize the Health Journal

Stay organized with your journal. You may be recording a lot of information, and it’s easy for the journal to become cluttered or confusing. If you can’t easily make sense of your entries when you look back on them, you won’t experience all the benefits of journaling. 

Many pre-made health journals are specific for recording health-related topics. Or you could make your own. Use charts, multiple colors, or highlighters to keep track of different subjects. You could also create an online health journal or record the information on your computer. 

Safe Keeping

Keep your journal in a strategic location. The best place for your diary or journal will depend on what information you’re recording. If you want to keep track of what you eat, keep your journal in the kitchen. You can write down your meals while you prepare them so that you won’t forget about any ingredients or measurements. If you plan to journal before bed, keep it on your nightstand. 

If you think you’ll be too tired when you go to bed to update your journal, keep it in your living room instead. You can write your daily entry while you watch TV or relax after work. 

You can use your journal just to record general health information, symptoms, or medications, but you can also use it to track your progress toward your goals. Pick one or two health goals and record information about your progress every day. If you don’t have much experience with journaling, start small. 

Keep Your Health Journal Simple

Don’t try to record every single piece of information about your health all at once. You may become overwhelmed and quit. Try to keep your journaling to under 20 minutes per day until it becomes a habit. Then, if you want, you can gradually increase the amount of information you record. 

After you’ve worked on your journal for one week, look back on what you’ve written and try to find patterns or clues about foods, medicines, activities, sleep, and other factors. It may take longer than a week to notice something significant, so keep checking your entries weekly. 

You should probably keep your health journal private. It doesn’t need to be a complete secret, and people can know that you’re writing a health journal. However, the information you record should be for yourself and your doctor. If you know that a friend or family member will look at what you’ve written down, you may be tempted to only record the favorable things and not the bad. 

Journal Prompts to Help You Get Started

You don’t just have to record the same information every day in your journal. You can also add entries about other topics. There might be something you want to write about that doesn’t require a daily entry, or you might be inspired to write about a more creative topic. Writing about various issues can keep things fresh, so you won’t get bored and stop journaling. Here are a few prompts to consider writing about in your health journal: 

• What is your biggest health goal, and why?
• What energizes you?
• Favorite motivating songs.
• Favorite activities – indoor or outdoor.
• Define Self-Care in your words.
• How do you feel about food?
• How has your health, activity, or moods changed in the last year?
• What inspires you to get healthy?
• What new ‘thing’ would you like to learn.

These topics should help spark your creativity and encourage you to write. Once you get used to writing in your health journal, you’ll probably think of many other topics on your own. Drop a comment and let us know how we did. Can you think of other journal entries that will help people to collect all their information?