Self-Monitoring Is Important for Healthy Aging

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Keeping track is an important step for anyone looking to improve their health and well-being. Self-monitoring provides an effective way to achieve successful weight-loss while helping you stay accountable and motivated. Monitoring can also help in managing other personal goals for healthy living. For example, by tracking exercise duration and intensity, you more accurately measure your progress toward daily, weekly and monthly fitness goals.

With the right strategies, proper guidance and resources, you can develop your skills for lifelong success with weight management that allows you to achieve lasting results when it comes to your long-term goals. It is important to be aware of all the available options for self-monitoring and to keep track of results regularly in order to achieve success with any menu plan. To maximize benefits, also monitor and document your exercise type and duration.

Tips to Help You Stay Motivated

Keeping your weight in the normal range is an important part of healthy aging. Monitoring your dietary and fitness progress can help you stay motivated. Listed below are four benefits of tracking your food, weight and daily exercise:

1) Holds You Accountable for Decisions – Self-monitoring of your dietary intake and exercise regimen has been shown to produce greater adherence with less decline.

2) Helps You Balance Energy Intake – The goal of self-monitoring your weight loss program is to increase your self-awareness of how much energy you consume compared to how much energy you burn.

3) Measures Actionable Goals – Self-monitoring refers to the observing and recording the progress and changes of the actionable goals you’ve set for new eating and exercise habits.

4) Gives You Better Options – Using a checklist for self-monitoring your weight loss plan can help you stay focused on the tasks at hand and provide better options for staying on track.

Combine Monitoring with Your Lifestyle Interventions

Even though smartphone apps and wearable devices that record physical activity (such as daily steps) are less accurate than research-grade equipment, these are useful tools for any individual to measure daily improvements for monitoring goals. Whereas all methods of self-monitoring of daily food consumption and exercise routine have challenges, the use of the latest technology to track “cause and effect” has been shown to better match the results taken from clinical devices. Recent research suggests using high-tech tools for self-monitoring of weight loss results was less beneficial when the devices were used as a standalone strategy and not incorporated with other interventions, such as established lifestyle interventions.

Although it may not have a snappy sales pitch, self-monitoring and self-regulating your weight loss journey will allow you to form new eating and exercise habits, which is the fastest way for you to achieve a healthy weight for living healthy.