The Best Planner for Tracking your Health November 10, 2016 05:00

This blog post is a part of the series "The Best Planner for..." which provides suggestions for ways in which you can use the UPstudio Planner.  Each post in this series will focus on a different way to utilize the planner layout. The UPstudio Planner is designed for versatility, and is suited for many uses and not limited to the featured suggestions.  Show us how you use your planner by sending us an email at hello@upstudionc.com, or tagging us on social media (all handles can be found on our website).

It's all downhill after Halloween - in regards to my eating habits at the end of the year that is.  Even before Halloween is here, that bowl of candy waiting for Trick-or-Treaters is too inviting to pass up, and then there's the leftover candy... Someone's gotta take care of it, right?  The weather is cooler, which means it's acceptable to start wearing bulkier clothes, and of course there's no explanation required for Thanksgiving and Christmas.  There is food everywhere, and we're not talking veggie trays.  With all of the tempting goodies, I need a way to plan and track my health, and hold myself accountable so I don't go too far off the deep end.  

We've already discussed the Best Planner for Meal Planning, and staying healthy through choosing wholesome meals.  In addition to that, the UPstudio planner is the perfect way to keep everything in check and track basic aspects of my health.  Some might believe that there are better ways to track health, in wearable devices or even through your phone, but I would argue that keeping track in a planner (perhaps in tandem with use of a fitness tracker) is the best way for a few reasons:

• You can actually make a plan, instead of just tracking, and then compare what you did to what your plan was.
• While a fitness tracker is great for some things, there is more to health than just how many steps you take in a day.  Writing everything down in a planner then allows you to visualize each aspect together - including exercise, water consumed, meals, sleep, etc.  Think of it as a dashboard for your whole health.
• Your health plan can be side by side with your daily schedule, therefore it's easier to schedule realistic goals and not feel discouraged by not completing a lofty task.
• Writing things down keeps you accountable to yourself.

The UPstudio Planner is suited to address all of these and more with its versatile layout.  The monthly goals sheet can address long term goals - losing weight, trying new recipes, even posting a photo or your beginning of the month stats to compare from month to month.

The monthly layout can be used in a variety of ways.  Suggested here is showing which days you exercised with a key - a great way to visualize how you did at the end of the month.

The weekly layout shown below is just one example of a way to both plan and track your health.  For this, I used the information logged on my iPhone and transferred it into my planner to see it at a glance, paired with my daily water intake, exercise goals and achievements, hours of sleep, and meals.  Because I could see everything in a 'dashboard' style, it was easy to see how things related:  I was working on 2 big deadlines last week and my meals suffered because of it.. when I ran errands, I walked a considerable amount more than just walking around the office.. and when you have kids you just really never get enough sleep.  A harsh reality. 

We challenge you to use the UPstudio Planner and test it our for yourself based on your own health needs!