Why a Food Journal?

Healthy Foods

Why a Food Journal?

By Leanne Ely, C.N.C

Keeping a food journal is a great way to track your nutrition, your water intake, your moods, sleep patterns, and your exercise. All of these things are interrelated to your physical and mental health. By tracking these things you can figure out why you eat what you eat and why you feel how you feel.

It’s a great way to find food sensitivities, emotional eating triggers, and quality of sleep. For example, you may learn that drinking caffeine after 3:00 keeps you up all night or you might learn that tortillas give you heart burn. As you are able to monitor and evaluate how different foods make you feel you are able to make better choices and improve your quality of life.

A food journal is also a great way to keep you on a healthy eating plan. Being accountable to yourself is a powerful thing. If you know that you have to write down everything you eat you may find yourself thinking twice about having that piece of pie after dinner time. I know that’s saved me from many pointless calories over the years.

Keep track of the calories you burn by recording your physical activity for the day. In addition to this  you can also record how you feel afterward. At first you may record how much it burned or how exhausted and out of breath you are but soon you’ll notice your notes changing to how good you feel and how awake you are. You may even find that you are able to focus better at work or have more energy for the family at the end of the day. Each of these details are important to record.

Finally, tracking your water intake in your food journal will help make sure you drink your full daily requirement. The amount of water you drink varies from person to person. A good rule of thumb is around 64 ounces of water a day. If you are overweight you may consider drinking half your weight in ounces. For example, if you weigh 200 pounds you would drink 100 ounces of water daily.

There are many benefits to keeping a food journal. Buy tracking what you eat and how you feel you can empower yourself to make wise choices and see improvements. It’s an exciting process when improving your health