Why you MUST use a food diary!
Looking to eat more healthily? How are you planning on tracking your progress? The first step is using a food diary to keep track of what you’re doing right now, and to chart your progress as you change your lifestyle.
Most people who are unfit don’t follow any type of system to achieve results. They rely on ‘gut instinct’ or ‘listening to how their body feels’ and expect results. The truth is that you don’t know your body nearly as well as you think you do. Your body has not been telling you to eat pizza all these years, or go out drinking and damaging your liver.
When you start a process of eating better, you need to analyse what you are currently doing. This is so you know how bad things really are at the moment and also what you’re doing right!
It’s easy to lose track of a biscuit here, or exactly how many pints/wine glasses you downed last night. Then come end of the week be unsure of why you haven’t lost the weight you’ve been hoping for. So having a diary makes this so much easier. It forces you to focus and be truthful with yourself about your current eating habits.
It doesn’t have to be complicated. It does though at the very least need two things; consistency and honesty. There are many ways to achieve this.
1. One is a paper diary where you write down everything you eat.
2. Another method is taking a quick snap of your food. This will not just allow you to track what you’re eating, but also portion sizes.
3. Lastly, there are apps out there that you can type in what you’ve eaten and it’ll keep track for you and can even measure it against calorie goals.
As you do this and start to make changes, it’ll be tracking your progress and show you when you’re having a great day and when you’ve had a little slip, which will happen from time to time. Sometimes you can’t say no to going out for a meal. Sometimes you have to go to a party. It’s life, not every day is going to be perfect. Although, when you are tempted to eat or drink something a little naughty, having to write it down in the diary will at least make you think twice about doing it.
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