No matter what your eating program is, restricted, or not, you are still human. As a human you must take in energy, nutrients, sleep and excrete waste. If you take in more nutrients and energy than you use, the remaining energy will be stored as excess fat. The good news is that this is natural. However, unless you plan to hibernate for the Winter, keeping tabs on the amount of fat you store will be in your overall best interest. If you effectively succeed at this step and you keep accurate records, not trying to lie to yourself, and you don’t have a medical condition that is causing the weight gain, you can and will succeed. This is without question the hardest step. However, keeping the record of what you eat and drink can help you metric your caloric intake, identify unhealthy habits and allow you to see exactly what is going right and wrong with the way you eat.
Why should I keep a food journal?
The eating journal is easily the most important tool for anyone trying to make an eating lifestyle change.
Humans process our world by telling themselves a story, with a total belief in what we think we do, not necessarily what we actually do. This is extremely true when it comes to eating. Cultural influences, family upbringing, and the people we hand out with can easily influence what we eat. The best way to figure out what it really is we are eating is to document it in a journal. Most people will at first prefer to tell themselves it’s a waste of time, and it doesn’t make sense. This is your primal brain. It doesn’t like change and will do anything it possibly can to stop you from exposing yourself from danger. To overcome this automatic switch one must re-write the brain is to make a template that will lay over the blueprint created during the brains formative years. Unfortunately, from my experience, extreme stress, catastrophic events and extreme bouts of danger will undo the template and return you to the blueprint. So please keep this in mind as you create new lifestyles and habits. Writing in the journal bypasses the filters built into your brain and maintained by the gatekeeper of the subconscious, and speaks right to the primal brain. So the first step is to calibrate where the primal brain feels safe and nudging it toward a more positive outlook. I realize that you may be the happiest and most positive person on the planet, but at the end of the day, if you truly like what you see when you look in the mirror, you wouldn’t be reading books like this one.
What is a food journal exactly?
Today we have phones, tablets, and even watches that work as portable computers. With an emotional journal, I encourage people to use a physical paper journal. However, for the purpose of tracking food, it can often be easier to use a mobile device. If you’re like me and you like to write with pen and paper go for it. The key is never to skip writing down every crumb and drop that goes into your mouth within 5 minutes of consuming it.Sooner is better and obsession is king. Make sure it’s convenient. Make notes if you like, this journal will become messy, with cross-outs, diagrams, pictures, and drawings. For many people old school index cards, and mini-notepads are perfect for this task. If you like to use an 8 1/2 X 11 notebook for your final journal I recommend using a smaller more portable version and moving it over every night. At the end of each day read over the list and make sure it is 100% accurate. Not one item can e skipped. As for all of you “I’ll get to it later” and “procrastinators,” the book will be blank in under a week and don’t bother trying unless you are fully committed to the task.
How to use the food journal
The objective of the journal is to be very objective and non-judgmental. It should just be very matter of fact and not much thought needs to go into the initial journal. After the evaluation of the journal, one should elect not to eat things, but the journal is strictly for documentation purposes. Just keep writing it all down. For an entire week, seven days keep a journal each day write down the food and use hash marks to show how many portions you eat. Hash marks are stick lines. You draw four and on the fifth mark put a strike and start a new set. Write it all down. Start a new page for each day and date it. Be specific not to miss anything, even breath mints, every glass of water, candy, pretzel or chip. The more you put down, the easier your success will be later on. The key is in the details. If you have a salad, did it have tomatoes, croutons, cheese? How much? Draw a picture if needed. What kind of dressing did you put on? And about how much? Quick tip, I find that getting the dressing on the side and dipping my fork into the dressing allows me to get the exact amount of flavor in every bite without using nearly as much dressing
Adding it all up
The actual purpose of the journal is to help identify which foods you may be eating that don’t co-inside with your dietary intentions. In my case, for example, I am overweight and my blood sugar was elevated. I needed to lower it, so I cut out soda, candy, cakes, and cookies. My blood sugar dropped a little bit but not allot. I did a food journal for a week. Every day with my dinner I had a salad, a vegetable, a meat and a white potato. Preferably large. Oops… There it is. It was the white potato… And I do so like white potatoes…
If your goal is to lose weight or reduce your blood sugar, you must first seek medical guidance to design your desired outcome. Then find a website that will give you a good idea of caloric consumption. There are dozens of them out there. If you’re not sure, just try to get as close as possible. Every week identify each item you are, and figure out how many calories, or figure out the fat content, the sugar grams or sodium, whatever it is you are seeking to correct. It’s very illuminating as you go down the list, you will most likely see what you gravitate towards. In my case it was carbs… That stinks. I also realized that I was “eating mindlessly” and snacking whole meals throughout the day.
Wrapping it up like an egg roll
As you use the food journal to assess your food intake, some really scary stuff may come to light. You will see your eating trends. How much water, fruit juice or soda you are drinking. You may find those nasty hidden calories like sugar and cream in your coffee… ouch. The low-fat butter may actually be higher in calories than straight butter. “Mindless Eating” may be detected. The journal is unbiased documentation of what you eat, it’s all there, and the facts are in plain black and white. Use the patterns to help you make informed choices as you cut back and substitute healthy choices for the less healthy ones. In my case, I find the Boot Camps and support groups of like-minded people to be instrumental in meeting my overall goals