Benefits of a Food Journal

Do you want to lose weight but do not know where to start? Your answer could be a food journal. A food journal can be as simple as writing down everything you eat in a day on a pad of paper while lying in bed at night, or as involved as plugging in your foods into a fancy app on a smart phone as soon as you eat it. Here are just three reasons keeping a food journal every now and then can help you conquer better nutrition:
  1. When was the last time you ate a vegetable? The answer should be your last meal, but your food journal may show you it was last Tuesday!
  2. You are not a big sweets eater, right? A food journal may help remind you that you grabbed 3 Hershey Kisses from the break room at work at 10 AM. It may remind you that you quickly consumed a chocolate chip cookie from the kitchen cabinet to hold you over until dinner was ready. It can remind you that you treated yourself to a Dove dark chocolate while watching your favorite TV show in the evening. The small amounts of sweets a few times throughout the day added up to an additional 180 calories!
  3. Do you eat your evening TV snack of chips from the bag or a bowl? Do you know how many chips you took out of the bag – was it the recommended serving size of 7 chips? Portion sizes make a great difference in our total calorie intake. Try quantifying your portion sizes in your food journal, it can be an eye opening experience!
Keeping a food journal can be a tedious task, but can help you recognize sources of excess calories throughout the day. If you want to lose weight, keeping a food journal for even just a few days can help identify simple change opportunities in your current diet that would help kick start your weight loss efforts, such as portioning out snack foods or adding a vegetable to your dinner!