From way before my FND diagnosis, I was tracking my day, in one way or another. When I started experiencing what I refer to lovingly as my “weird and wonderful” symptoms I knew something wasn’t right. So I started making a note of the symptoms and anything about the day that I thought significant; mainly activity and emotions. I was able to see patterns and identify triggers. I’ve learnt just how valuable it is to track your health. By keeping track of what you do in a day and your symptoms, you can start to identify triggers and patterns of energy slumps or the start of symptoms. It could be you identify that being in crowds is a trigger, or you might discover peaks and troughs fall in line with your menstrual cycle. It is easy to miss these things otherwise, if there’s nothing to look back on. So today, I would to give you 5 ways to track your day for better health.
A Few Points about Tracking your Day
- This isn’t something to get obsessed over. I’ve heard people say they don’t track or monitor their health anymore because they became too anxious about it. You’re not meant to be too rigid about this. Instead use it as a guide, to learn how to live a more fulfilling life.
- The most important factor is to keep it simple. If it takes only a few minutes to complete your journal, you’re more likely to be able to still complete it on bad days.
- The purpose isn’t so that you can take it to appointments; there won’t be time to go through it there. It is something you can review and reflect on and inform your doctor.
- It will help you see the overall picture, rather than how you feel on any particular day
- You can look for patterns. Say you notice a good day (let’s keep positive), you can look back on the few days before looking for consistencies.
- A symptom journal aside, keeping a journal is a great way to carry out self-care and work on self-development. It helps relieve stress and worry to get your thoughts down on paper and work through emotions. This is a discount code for the one I use.
Continue reading for five ways to track your day for better health.
Tasks/Activity Log
Track what you’re doing in the day, so you can find your baseline activity level. You can also start to track what you do and how you feel. It can be useful to track you are when carrying our various activities such as running errands, housework or seeing friends and family.
Self-Care
Either write down your activities as you do them, to show what you’re achieving. Even better, plan what you are going to do to take care of yourself and tick them off as you do them.
Symptoms
Record your symptoms throughout the day, also rating the severity, e.g slight/severe headache or energy 3/10. You may begin to see patterns alongside the other categories. It will also help you to identify what your main symptoms are and if they vary from day to day. It will help you make decisions about lifestyle changes when symptoms are reviewed against activity, for example.
Food
Write down your breakfast, lunch and dinner; remember to include snacks too. What you eat, may be having an affect on energy levels and could also be causing a symptom flare. Certain inflammatory foods have been known to be an issue. When you have a symptom flare, you can check back to see what you ate just before.
Notes
Anything else that works for you. No one is going to live the exact same day as you. So note down anything specific that will help you. It might be the times you take medication, example.
If you are convinced to track your days for better health, then I have a gift for you. I’ve used the information in this post to create a day tracker download. Just follow this link to get access straight away.
