How to Create a Health and Wellness Journal and Establish Healthy Habits (2023)

A few months ago I made a decision to reduce my work hours and use the time to really focus on my health and wellbeing. Being a planner addict, of course, this was the perfect opportunity to create a Health and Wellness Journal! So, I customised a ring-bound planner with everything I needed to track my diet, sleep, moods, energy, habits and more. In this article, I share how I set up my wellness journal, along with some printable templates to help you create your wellness journal too.

Choose your Health and Wellness Journal

To set up my health and wellness journal, I chose an empty ring-bound Time Planner from kikki.K. It’s a planner I’ve had for years so it’s great to be putting it to good use again!

kikki.K offers refill packs for their Time Planners so although I hadn’t used the leather planner for a few years it was quick and easy to update.

I added a Diary Refill pack that includes monthly calendars and weekly layouts. Plus, I purchased a set of lined and square grid paper inserts, a twin pack of notebooks especially for the Large (A5) Time Planner, and a pack of Customisable Tabs. This gave me the perfect starting point for my Health and Wellness Journal.

Customizing Tabs for Your Health and Wellness Journal

After adding a calendar and diary to my Time Planner, I needed to decide what sections I would divide the remainder of the planner into.

If you usually use the bullet journaling method, think of each tabbed section in the ring-bound planner as a ‘bullet journal collection’.

To decide on what sections I needed in my wellness journal, I made a brain dump, or rough list, of the health and wellness topics that are important to me. This included things like food, moods, water intake, habit tracking, gratitude, yoga, meditation, self-care and daily journaling.

Once I was clear on the topics I wanted in my health journal, I thought about how I could best arrange those topics within tabbed sections, without creating too many tabs. I also wanted to use up as many Tab Stickers from the kikki.K Customisable Tabs as I could.

I came up with the following sections:

• Planning
• Events
• Food and Health
• Goals
• Habits
• Journaling

This is how I use each section:

Monthly Calendar for Planning

The first Tab in my Health and Wellness journal is Planning. Within the planning section, I keep a monthly view calendar.

This is where I plan upcoming health-related events or appointments or capture them after they have happened. It’s also a good place to keep track of medication, recurring symptoms such as a headache, mood fluctuations, or to mark the beginning of my menstrual cycle. The monthly view makes it easy to see everything in one place, recognise patterns, and make sure nothing important is forgotten.

Weekly Journaling of Events

The second tab in my Health and Wellness journal is Events. This is essentially a Diary, with a weekly spread for each week of the year.

The weekly spreads are used for brief notetaking of the events of the day and how they impact on my health and wellbeing.

Printable Food and Health Journal

The third tab in my Wellness Journal is Food and Health. This is where I use the printable Food and Health Journal pages.

Both the Food Journal and Health Journal (which can be purchased as a set here) provide enough space to record the details of my week. Here I can log the meals that I eat, my sleep, daily exercise, moods, stress levels and more.

This is a great way to recognise any patterns forming between my sleep, moods, diet etc.

If you’re trying to improve habits in any of these areas, for example, eat a healthier diet, eliminate particular foods, or exercise three times a week, the food and health log will help you stay on track, and measure results.

Goal Setting For Health and Wellbeing

The fourth tab in my Wellness Journal is Goals. I have written down some general goals on a sticky note, plus I use the 90-day goal planner printable to achieve more specific goals.

The printable 90-Day Goal planner allows me to set one big goal to achieve in a 90 day period. This big goal gets broken down into three main projects that need to be completed in order to achieve my goal.

Finally, each project is broken down into several tasks that I can schedule into my planner. Working on these smaller tasks reduces overwhelm and I can focus on achieving my goal one step at a time.

Establishing and Tracking Healthy Habits in Your Wellness Journal

The fourth tab in my wellness journal is Habits. Each month I print out a Monthly Habit Tracker page (download one for free in the Planner Lovers Resource Library) to insert into my Time Planner. It’s a simple design and I can quickly fill in the month, days of the week and the habits I’m going to track.

You don’t have to wait for a new month to get started. As you can see in the above image, I started this tracker towards the end of February! Set up your tracker whenever you are ready.

In this particular habit tracker, I track habits that affect my health and wellbeing in a positive way. At the end of the day, I quickly run through the list of habits and place an ‘X’ in the boxes of the habits that were completed. Using colour coding helps me to see at a glance which healthy habits I’m successfully establishing, and which ones still need some work!

Gratitude, Creativity and Inspiring Quotes

The fifth tab in my Wellness Journal is Personal. In this section, I write my daily gratitude list and use brush markers to create hand-lettered versions of my favourite quotes. It’s also a good space for notetaking when reading an inspiring book or listening to a podcast.

Learn more about the benefits of gratitude journaling, in this post.

I’ve filled the Personal section with square grid paper from kikki.K. This allows for plenty of flexibility, whether I’m writing notes or getting creative with hand-lettering.

Daily Journaling

The final tab in my health journal is Journaling. This section is where I express how I’m feeling using longer form journaling. I can write about my health, moods and energy levels and expand on my daily notes from the Events section.

Journaling is filled with inserts of lined paper from kikki.K.

Reflection and Bringing It All Together

While journaling itself is a wonderful therapeutic tool that can help you learn more about yourself and your wellbeing, reflecting on your journaling can make it even more powerful.

At the end of every day, week or month, look back over the entries in each section of your Health and Wellness Journal. Celebrate your achievements and positive habits you’ve established, no matter how small they seem.

Look for patterns between diet, quality of sleep, stress, exercise, the events of your day and more. How are they affecting your health and wellbeing? For example, were you more tired during the week you missed your exercise sessions? Or did you exerience recurring headaches when you ate take-out too often? These insights can help you make little changes that will improve how you feel every day.

Remember, health and wellness look different for everyone. It’s important to avoid comparison, especially when using social media. Instead, focus on what is meaningful and valuable to you, and what makes YOU feel good!

When you reflect on your health and wellness journaling, can you see areas you would like to improve on? Use your Journaling section to explore these and establish more healthy habits!

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