news&views Spring 2015 | Page 30

Journaling for Your Health

BY SHARON GOERG

Journal writing was a valuable tool that I used with all my students throughout my teaching career . Since retiring I have led workshops on journaling for teens and adults including sessions for health care workers . Earlier journals had to be created , but today journals abound in all sizes , formats , and designs wherever stationery products are sold . This article emphasizes the therapeutic and health aspects to journal writing that include diet , fitness , emotional perspective , creativity and enjoyment .

Journaling can be as simple as tracking your successes each week . A combination of your short-and long-term food goals — portion size and consumption — with your exercise program is a good approach . Types of exercise , distances , weights , heart rate , and any aches and pains can all be recorded . There are also many food prompts for weight loss on the Internet . For example : this time when I diet I hope to . . . or weight loss is important to my health because . . .
The more details you include in a food and exercise journal , the more useful it becomes as the actual process of writing can reinforce and clarify your goals . Statistics show that journaling doubles a person ’ s likelihood of weight-loss success . A Chicago author , Marilyn Fitzgerald , has written a journal called Spirit of a Winner . She maintains that a journal can work as a tool for self-empowerment that often reveals self defeating and self sabotaging thinking that can hinder personal progress in terms of weight and overall health .
Some websites act like a journal , letting you track your diet , blood pressure , exercise , and sleep . ( Lose it ! or MyNetDiary ) You are able to record your moods , your reactions , your feelings . It does not have to be elaborate , just honest and spontaneous . Learn about yourself in relationship to food , exercise and overall health .
Discovering your inner self can be another goal . Use a journal to describe your emotions , thoughts , fears , hopes and life experiences . An article by J . Smyth , et al ., in the Journal of American Medical Association ( April 1999 ) states that “ research has demonstrated that writing about emotionally traumatic experiences has a surprisingly beneficial effect on symptoms , well-being , and health care use in healthy individuals . Patients with mild to moderately severe asthma or rheumatoid arthritis who wrote about stressful life experiences also had clinically relevant changes in health status at four months compared to a control group .” More research on journaling for cancer patients has been published recently with books like The Write Way to Wellness supporting these positive claims . The Journal of Clinical Oncology reported that earlystage breast cancer patients may benefit from journaling by recording their feelings about the disease , resulting in a reduced number of visits to the doctor because of breast cancer related symptoms .
Esther Sternberg , a doctor who is the director of the neural immune program and neuro-endocrine immunology and behavior at the National Institute of Mental Health in the United States , claims that
30 | www . arta . net