Are you interested in setting health goals? Maybe your goal is to lose weight, be more active, increase your energy, or to floss daily. Identifying your goal is an important step, yet if you’re ready to seriously work towards that goal, going one step further to identify strategies to help you accomplish that goal is also important.
Self-monitoring is a term used to describe one commonly used behavior change strategy. Researchers have found self-monitoring to be an effective method for helping people meet various health goals.
The formal definition of this technique is: “Establish a method for the person to monitor and record their behavior(s) as part of a behavior change strategy.” In other words, it’s a term used for tracking your health behaviors. Note there are two parts mentioned above: 1) establish a method AND 2) record your behavior.
Let’s break it down a little bit more. Practically speaking, to start self-monitoring you might:
| How to Self-Monitor | Example |
| 1. Select a health behavior to be tracked. | 1. Eating habits. |
| 2. Pick a system or method for tracking it. | 2. use a food jounral app daily. |
| 3. Regularly record your behavior. | 3. Record before bedtime what was eaten that day. |
| 4. Review that system regularly. | 4. Spend 10 minutes every Sunday reviewing the past week. |
| 5. Analyze your progress and make changes as needed. | 5. Based off of review, identify one eating habit to improve for the next week. |