How Food Journaling can be helpful
*Disclaimer: food tracking isn't for everyone. If you have recovered from an eating disorder or fall into controlling patterns with food, tracking may not be for you.
Not always the most exciting thing to do, but food journaling can be a HUGE help for individuals trying to stay healthy, lose weight, gain muscle, train for an athletic event...etc. Tracking your meals is straight-up boring, I get it. I get a lot of eye rolls and "do I have to" from clients when I ask them to track their food, but there are some reasons for my madness.
I track my food about three times a year. It isn't sexy, exciting or fun, but it helps to provide me with insight.
Why do I track my food?
I'm a Nutritionist. I should know what I am doing, right? Well, yes and no. I am a Nutritionist YES, and I have a pretty solid/healthy relationship with food for the most part. But this doesn't mean that I am always nailing my portion sizes, eating enough vegetables or ensuring I am getting enough fibre. I am a Nutritionist, but NO, I am not perfect.
So when it comes down to it, I use food journaling or tracking (or whatever we want to call it) for the same reasons I ask my clients to keep a food journal for me. Food journaling provides an extra level of insight into our diets and our habits.
Helpful information you learn when food journaling:
Perspective. What am I eating? It might sound a little weird, but most of our meals are pretty forgettable. Aside from a handful of truly memorable meals in our lifetime, our brains don't feel it necessary to remember that turkey sandwich you ate for lunch four days ago. So, when working with a Nutritionist or trying to self-identify eating patterns, tracking what we eat becomes essential to gathering this information.
Accountability. Plain and simple, writing out what you are consuming on a given day helps provide you with accountability. Whether or not someone else is looking at this log, the act of writing it down makes us more conscious of the choices we are making.
Eating enough. When it comes to tracking our food, most of us have this perception that it is to ensure that you aren't overeating, and sure you could use it for this, but more often than not, in my practice, individuals aren't consuming enough in a given day.
What do I like eating? This one is more for me as your Nutritionist, but you can also find some great insight. If you enjoy having pizza or brownies or whatever it might be, perhaps there is a way to make food that provides you with more of something you need without giving up your favourite things.
Discovering eating patterns. This is a big one! Knowing when you are eating, if you are skipping meals and replacing them with cups of coffee, or forgoing the snack in favour of a couple more hours of work. Most of us know we are skipping meals and when we are most likely to skip meals, but time and time again with clients, it isn't until they see this information written down that they see how ingrained this behaviour is in their life.
If you have felt that your eating habits have taken a turn or you have just been doing the same thing day after day and aren't getting the results you've been hoping for, food journaling might be the right tool for you.
Try it for a few days and see what type of feedback you get:
Are you getting 6-8 servings of vegetables every day?
Are you drinking enough water?
Do you eat breakfast and lunch?
Are you grazing all day long without actually sitting down to a meal?
Remember, this is an exercise in getting to know yourself, not control yourself.
Last little side note, when I say food journaling, I mean literal pen to paper or just in a note document on your phone if that's easier. No need for a fancy app (paid or free); keep it nice and simple. Sure, tracking macros and calories can be helpful information(depending on your goals), but for most people, it is too much information and ends up overcomplicating the habits/results we are trying to learn.
Keep it simple, be gentle with yourself and see what you can learn.
