22 Feb Food Journaling

Documentation is part of our everyday life. We take a selfie to commemorate a moment and snap pictures of our food when it’s artfully placed on our plate, so keeping a daily docket of our calories should come naturally right? Wrong! Food journaling for recipe lovers might come as second nature, but for most of us we just don’t care that much. Should we though? Here’s a few reasons to keep a food journal:

1. Food journaling keeps you accountable
2. Food journals pinpoint emotional eating
3. Use as a diagnostic tool, help you discover what should and shouldn’t go in your body
4. Helps you remember the stuff you do like to eat!

Pinpoint Emotional Eating

Keeping a diet journal doesn’t mean all you use it for is tracking calories and weight. In fact, the best way to utilize your dieting journal is to write out how you are feeling about your progress or problems. If you find yourself upset and craving comfort food, take a moment to write about those feelings and why you want to fill those feelings with food. Once you recognize the signs of emotional eating you can begin to correct and curb your response. This doesn’t mean that you will immediately be able to take corrective action, but it will lay the groundwork for progress. We will discuss emotional eating in more depth in an upcoming blog.

Keeping You Accountable

Tracking your daily consumption will also help you become a mindful eater. Mindful eating plays a big role in weight loss and correcting emotional eating. Most people eat for reasons beyond hunger or nutritional need and while that isn’t always a bad thing, it can lead to bad habits. Tracking when you eat at mealtime and all those in-betweens can help you determine where those extra calories are sneaking in. There’s a British television show on YouTube called ‘Secret Eaters’ that perfectly demonstrates that we eat unconsciously and how detrimental it can be to our goals. It is easy to lose track of how many carb-filled dinners you’ve had in a week if you can’t even remember what you just had for breakfast. Keeping a food journal will help you stay honest with your program and just might make you rethink ordering another pizza twice in one week.

Diagnostic Tools

Diet journals also run as a diagnostic tool for your body. Your body is your vehicle. It takes you where you need to be and requires fuel to adequately function. Just like your car, if you aren’t giving your body the right type of fuel it will eventually give out. Food tracking allows you to look back and pinpoint what you ate and how it physically made you feel. Many people who didn’t realize they had Celiac disease found out through food journaling because they realized when they ate a lot of breads and glutenous pasta they felt sick and sluggish. Think about the way the food you consume makes you feel as you write about it and when you eat it. If it isn’t producing the results you need, consider why you keep eating it. This will lead you towards eating the right things.