Passions Journal Wellness: PHWL3AF [Diary]

I just got my Wellness Journal! Before buying it I was kind of frustrated that I couldn't find photos or a more in depth description of the pages (the bookstores in my area didn't have it in yet), so before I start using my journal I'm writing a quick review. This would be a 5-star rating IF the first 3 sections covered the same periods of time (goals section = 1 year, exercise section = 116 days, diet section = 29 days). This is a big enough flaw to me that I'm considering returning it.

For those still interested, here's what's included:

Food Calendar - Shows you what fruit/vegetables are available during which months of the year (both Northern and Southern Hemispheres)

Food Info - Gives some basic info for 7 dozen common foods (cal, carbs, protein, fat) with 62 blank spots for you to fill in your own (you can set the titles in this additional section to whatever you want, i.e. points, fiber, etc).

6 Labeled Tabbed Sections:

1. Personal Goals - within this section there are 3 types of pages: weekly goals, monthly goals, breakthrough moments. There are rows for up to 54 weeks (9 weeks per page). Each weekly space is enough to jot down a couple of sentences. The monthly goals start in January and end in December. There are 3 months per page, enough room for about 5-6 sentences. The breakthrough moments are blank versions of the weekly goals.

2. Exercise Log - 29 pages with 4 days on each page. The column headers are: date, exercises, time, distance/repetitions/workout notes. There is also a place to fill in intensity and cute little pictures to select the weather that day. If you're looking to fill in 4-5 workout items that'd probably fit, but you'd have to write little. If you're someone like me who wants to write, "Walking, 30 min, 2 miles, tired" then this will work well.

3. Diet - 29 pages with 1 day per page. This seems kind of dumb to me. Why would you only have 1 month of diet pages, 4 months of workout pages (assuming you workout everyday) and 1 year of personal goals. AUTHOR/EDITORS: Could you please fix this! Terrible, terrible design flaw.

4. General Health - 3 subsections, one for vitamins, herbs, other, one for healthcare, and one for body therapy.

5. Games-Sport - If you regularly play sports, this section allows you to record it: date, event, participants, result/score, challenge level. I don't play sports other than the Wii so I'd probably alter this section.

6. Inspirations - Blank pages to put people, places, photos, quotes, songs...

6 Blank Tabbed Sections - 12 pages each

Index where you can fill in the title for the included pages (all of them)

Stickers

The journal is generally well thought out with lots of useful sections and enough space to customise to suit your own 'wellness' activities. The section that hasn't been well thought through and that really spoils this journal is the 'Diet' section - each page is for a day but there are only enough pages for 29 days. In contrast the exercise log has enough spaces for about 120 days and the personal goals covers 12 months. I really like the journal, but it definitely needs a rethink about the time period it's intended to cover. If the time period was better thought through it would be a 5 star product.

The journal is organised as follows:

Planning - 2 pages with columns for event, date and notes
Seasonal foods calendar split into northern and southern hemispheres, covers 4 pages
Food facts (calories, carbs, protein and fat) over 3 pages with a further 2 pages to add your own foods and info
International clothing sizes, 1 page
Measures and Conversions, 2 pages

Named Tabbed Sections:
Personal Goals - 6 pages of weekly goals, 4 pages of monthly goals, 5 pages of breakthrough moments
Exercise Log - 29 pages with 4 sections per page with columns for date, exercises, time, distance & reps, workout notes and places to input the intensity and weather
Diet - 29 pages where each page covers a day and has areas for breakfast, morning snack, lunch, afternoon snack, dinner, night snack and notes
General Health - 6 pages each for: vitamins, herbs and other; healthcare; body therapy.
Games/Sport - Similar in look to the exercise log with with columns for date, event, participants and result/score with areas to rate the challenge level.
Inspirations - 20 pages with a space to write the title of the inspiration and the rest of the page is blank.

There are then 6 unnamed tabbed sections for your own personalisation.
There is an index at the back and a double pocket on the rear cover which contains 3 sheets of stickers - some for personalising the unnamed tabs and some for decorating the pages of the journal.

I agree with the other reviews that the Diet section is majorly flawed. I love the Journal, and it is perfect in all other respects, but I'm not sure what the practical reason was for only allotting 29 days worth of diet tracking pages, especially considering that approximately half the book is blank so you can customize as you want. Moleskine should have made the blank page section far smaller to create more space for the Diet section. You can go online and print blank diet pages to then paste/tape into the book, but what a chore! I guess that is what I will ultimately have to do, but unless Moleskine fixes this issue, I likely will not repurchase.