Keeping an achievement diary

Not only that, but a diary is a useful tool in tracking your progress. Seeing yourself day after day can make it difficult to work out whether you've lost any weight or gained in fitness. A diary is a good way of seeing if you're performing in line with your expectations and desires.

How should you set up your diary?
Really this one's up to you. If you find that you're using a computer all day, you may prefer to keep your diary in Word or even in other applications such as PowerPoint. Some people even make graphs out of their progress using Excel!

If you move around all day or don’t have constant access to a computer you may find that a notebook provides the best format. Make sure it has plenty of blank pages for each day, and try and make sure that it fits into your bag so that you can carry it around with you.

So what sort of information should you track?
To start with, record your vital statistics. These might include chest, waist and hips, along with circumference of the widest part of your thighs and arms. It's likely that you'll write down your weight as well.

If it's fitness you're after, you could try taking your resting heart rate at the beginning of your exercise program and monitoring it as you go. The fitter you get, the lower your resting heart rate should be — most normal, healthy resting pulse rates are between 60 and 80 beats per minute. Some people find that wearing a pedometer — a device that measures how many steps they have taken each day — is useful. This information could also be recorded. 10,000 steps a day is the generally accepted level of healthy fitness.

Take your new measurements once a week at most, preferably in the morning before you've eaten anything, and at the same time. Any more or less than this could lead to you being demoralised.

And what about diet?
Tracking your diet is a very good idea as it holds you accountable at the end of each day. Write down absolutely everything that you eat — and drink — and don't be economical with the truth. You're doing this for you and nobody else need see your diary.

By being truthful with yourself, you will be able to see how your diet affects your mood and your fitness: it can have a huge impact. The same can be said of cigarettes if you smoke, and alcohol. It's easy to see how ones vices affect fitness and motivation.

Don't forget that if you're doing regular exercise you will need carbohydrates as well as protein for building muscle.

Exercise counts too?
Of course. Write down everything you do and how long it takes you to do it. Set yourself some tests. See how far you can run in ten minutes and test yourself two weeks later.

Write down how long it takes you at the gym — including getting changed and showering. This will enable you to work out ways of how best to fit exercise into your life. It can be a big time commitment and so you have to be able to make it work for you.

Record your feelings when you're feeling unmotivated, and then make yourself do your exercise. This can give you an inner knowledge that you've beaten your motivation demons before and can do so again. But don't forget to listen to your body as well: if you're very tired or if your muscles are sore or injured, you risk serious injury — take it easy.

By using a diary you can also see when you're getting bored of a certain activity. Our bodies very quickly adapt to new routines and it's important to introduce change.

Good luck with your fitness and motivation — in years to come you'll be able to look back on your diary and see the progress that made you fit and healthy again.