Do you like to journal? Or are you still trying to motivate yourself to write in your journal every day? One of the most popular reasons for keeping a journal has to do with your health, both mental and physical health. Allowing your emotions to pour out onto paper can be a great way to just let your emotions stream out. Sometimes you may start writing about one particular topic and then something totally different gets written. In this post today we are going to cover both the mental and physical reasons of why you should be keeping a journal. Let's get started.

Journaling For Mental Health

If you are someone that suffers from stress, anxiety, or depression, you should definitely be writing in your journal every single day. Journaling is therapeutic, helps you get rid of all those thoughts and feelings without burdening someone else, and provides a host of benefits for various mental health disorders. Once you try this you should find that you feel less stressed out every day.

You Can Gain More Clarity

Keeping a journal can also provide you with more clarity. You are writing down all of your thoughts and feelings, which in turn can really help you to see what your innermost thoughts are. Even if you don’t realize it right now, you might have certain feelings that you don’t realize are there. This is why it is important to have a journal only you can read, because then you feel comfortable being completely open and honest. By doing this, you are able to gain a lot of clarity about yourself and your life.

It Helps You to Be More Creative

Journaling is an excellent way to release your inner creativity that might have been hiding there. Perhaps you get so caught up in your day to day life that you don’t often have the opportunity to be creative. Journaling is a form of self expression, even if you are just writing down what you did that day. By performing this self expression on a regular basis, you really can start being more creative in other areas of your life.

Journaling Lets You Find Your Triggers

There are certain triggers you might be dealing with in relation to your different mental health disorders. There are situations and people that can lead to having a day where your depression worsens, you feel more stress, or your anxiety causes severe panic attacks. By journaling every day, you can look for certain patterns that will show what might be causing these things. It can be anything from drinking caffeine to dealing with a certain co-worker. So many different situations and events can trigger your mental health episodes, and it is important o know what they are. Even if you see a therapist, they often recommend writing in a journal every day.

It Becomes a Way to Release Your Burdens

Mental health is often more difficult to deal with when you don’t have a way to release your mental burden. If you keep all of those thoughts and feelings bottled up, it makes everything harder to deal with. If you don’t feel comfortable talking to someone, then you can write in a journal and still feel like you are letting all of that out.

Journaling For Physical Health

Keeping a journal is very beneficial to your physical health, whether you are trying to figure out why you have allergy attacks, lose weight, or just manage your general health. Consider these different benefits of journaling for your physical health.

You Can Log What You Eat

One way journaling helps with physical health is by looking at what you are eating on a daily basis. This is important for a number of reasons. First of all, by knowing what you eat, you can see what type of nutrition you are getting, and what you might be lacking. You might find that while you eat plenty of whole grains, you aren’t getting enough fruits and vegetables on a daily basis, or that you aren’t drinking enough water for proper hydration. Another way it helps you is by tracking what you eat in order to lose weight. You can see where your biggest issues are with food and work to improve them.

It Helps You Notice Various Ailments

There may be physical ailments you are dealing with that aren’t made obvious right away. Start a journal and write down how you are feeling on a physical level every day. Be honest and pay attention to your different body cues. Perhaps you have a headache one day, and another day your stomach hurts. Also write down what you were doing, eating, and drinking that day. You may soon notice patterns, such as always getting headaches when work is stressful.

If you suffer from allergies keeping a food log and a record of how you feel can help you identify your triggers. You may find that your allergies are worse when going outside at certain times of the day or even the year. An allergy log can be given to your doctor, who can help you identify what might be bothering you.

You Can Keep a Schedule of Activities

If you are working on your fitness, the journal is a great way to keep track of your daily physical activities. Perhaps you want to do arms and legs on alternating days if you do strength training, and having a little calendar in your journal helps you keep track. You might also want to follow the trends of your regular physical activity each day by wearing a pedometer or fitness tracker and recording the data in the journal each day. There are a lot of ways to use a journal for your physical health, as well a health journal can be a great motivator to keep you on track and get you exercising regularly.

Identify Triggers For Emotional Eating

Emotional eating is unfortunately very common, often stemming from stress or anxiety in your life. You feel sadness, depression, anxiety, or other issues and you use food as a way to cope with it, similar to how people use substance abuse to deal with their problems. If you know you have been emotionally eating, but don’t know why, journaling every day can help you look for patterns.

As you can see there are tons of great reasons why you should be keep a journal. It's an easy way to reduce your stress levels, get healthy and allow your emotions out without bothering anyone else. Plus of course, no-one else has to read your journal so all your thoughts and feelings are totally confidential.

 

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