When I was young, I kept a diary and I wrote down everything that I had done each day. I ran across my diary a few weeks ago when I was going through my closet and I was amazed how vividly I remembered things as I read through the entries. That got me to thinking about how effective a food journal could be!
Food journals serve as a daily record of everything a person eats and drinks – it includes everything! Snacks, sauces, candy and water; nothing gets missed! Sometimes a food journal focuses on the caloric and nutrition information of each day, while others focus on emotions and the physical feelings associated with foods.
I realized that if my old diary could help me remember things I had done so many years ago, a food journal could really help me keep track and be aware of everything I’m eating each day. It’s very easy to snack throughout the day and eat hundreds of calories that you aren’t even aware that you are taking in.
Often, food journals become an eye-opening experience for those who keep them. Here’s a few tips on keeping your own food journal!
Write it all down. It’s important that you include everything you ate during the day. Yes, even that big piece of chocolate cake or that handful of tortilla chips from the company party. If you leave things out, the food journal becomes a less effective tool.
Quantity. In addition to what kinds of food you ate, it is important to keep track of how much of each food you have eaten. This will help you identify the areas that you may be overindulging in and make the changes needed.
Keep track of your mood. For many of us, our mood can affect the way we eat. For that reason, it could be very useful to include a column that focuses on how certain foods make you feel, or how you were feeling before you ate something. This can help pinpoint emotional eating triggers and help you avoid them in the future!
Write it down right away. Don’t try and remember everything you’ve eat throughout the day. It is much easier to write down the food as you eat it. If you wait until the end of the day, it becomes easy to forget about that can of soda or those Hershey Kisses you had earlier that day.
By writing these things down into a food journal, we can stay aware our eating habits. In fact, studies have shown that by keeping a food journal, people can increase their weight loss! In a study by Kaiser Permanente, those who kept food journals lost double the weight in comparison to those who did not keep track.
If you are looking for a template to get you started on your very own food journal, there are free templates available for Microsoft Word. If pen and paper is more your style, guidebook journals, like Dietminder Personal Food & Fitness Journal, do a great job of providing guidance for your everyday journaling. Of course, by using the suggestions above, a plain old notepad can work just as well!
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