How A Food Journal Can Make Listening To Your Body Easier
What is a food journal?
A food journal is exactly what it sounds like, a journal for the food you eat. However, what most probably don’t know is that it’s much more than a diary for your yogurt and fruit. It can help you understand your eating habits and patterns, and help you identify the foods you eat on a regular basis.
Keeping a food journal helps to make you more aware of your choices and can encourage you to be more mindful of not only what you are eating, but also how, why, and when you’re eating. Food journaling can often shed light on your patterns of eating as well. It can show you when you skip meals, if you’re overeating at night, or if you’re mindlessly snacking throughout the day.
Food journaling can also help identify certain triggers of unhealthy eating you might have. Are you grabbing that vending machine cookie or bag of chips when feeling stressed or bored at work? Do you eat a late night bowl of ice cream because you’re feeling lonely? You may even notice that you are eating more food than you need, but are not getting enough nutrition.
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What do food journals keep track of?
The information you choose to keep track of in your journal depends on the challenge you are tackling. It can be trying to lose a few pounds, identifying potential food sensitivities, tracking adequate nutrition or even beginning to manage an eating disorder like emotional eating. Whatever the motivating factor, there are a few key areas to focus in order to get the most out of your food journaling experience.
FOOD
While this may seem like the most obvious, it is also the most important. The key is to be truly honest and not just record the healthy foods. Being honest helps makes journaling more effective as a learning tool to create healthier habits that will promote your overall health and well-being.
TIME
Time can help to identify your pattern of eating throughout the day. If you note that you’re skipping meals or going too long without eating, this may help you realize why you’ve been unhealthily eating later in the day or night. Noting the time of day can help you to establish more balanced eating strategies to improve your eating habits.
HUNGER LEVEL
This is a valuable factor that allows greater awareness of why you are eating and how much you are eating. Many people eat outside of true physical hunger and eat beyond feeling satiated. So this strategy can be especially useful to those who suffer from eating disorders like binge eating, emotional eating or compulsive eating.
Positives of food journaling
Food journaling can be a positive experience that can help you to identify any negative eating habits that you might want to change. While some may find the task of keeping a food journal daunting, the benefits for most heavily out weigh keeping track of everything you eat.
The following are merely a handful of the positive aspects of food journaling:
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It can help you remember what you have eaten that day.
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You can see where you can improve if you are trying to achieve a goal.
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It will let you see if you are eating too much or not enough.
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It can help you realize if you are eating out of boredom rather than hunger.
4 benefits of keeping a food journal
1.It can help pinpoint what foods may be causing problematic health issues
If there’s anything physical you’re experiencing on a regular basis—including bloating, digestive distress, or rashes— a food journal may help you figure out what could possibly be causing it. So often we think we know what we eat, but we don’t realize the whole truth. A food journal is a mirror that really reflects what you put into your body.
Over time, you may notice certain patterns. For example, someone may realize that they always feel bloated after drinking kombucha, a sign that the carbonation may be too much for them. Or someone else may notice that their skin looks blotchy after eating gluten or dairy, indicating that they could have an intolerance. If you are experiencing any physical health problems, it’s still important to see a doctor, but your food journal can be a tool you bring to your appointment, which may help point to or rule out any potential culprits.
2. It shows how food may be impacting your mental health
It’s important to note that food can have a direct impact on mental health, including anxiety, depression, or energy levels. For example, if you notice that you have a spike in anxious feelings after your morning coffee, it could be a sign that you might need to switch up your a.m. beverage.
It’s also important to think about more than just the actual food. Where we eat, who we eat with, what we’re doing when we eat, and how we feel are all important to think about.
Always eating lunch at your desk while answering emails could make someone eat faster than they would away from their computer. This could impact your digestion or even how much you’re actually able to enjoy your meal.
3. Food journals paint a picture of what makes you feel good
Besides helping highlight ways what you eat could make you feel worse physically or mentally, food journals also show what makes you feel amazing. If you made a smoothie and it was the first one you ever made that actually didn’t leave you feeling hungry 20 minutes later, that’s definitely worth writing down so you remember what was in it and how it made you feel.
4. They’re a tool you can bring to health experts
It can be helpful to bring your food journal to doctor’s appointments as a way to point to or eliminate connections to foods that may be negatively impacting your health. Similarly, it can also be helpful to share your food journal with a registered dietitian, nutritionist, or health coach.
I have all my clients share their food journals with me and the discussions we have about them are different, depending on their health goals. For example, if one client’s food journal shows that they tend to overeat when they’re feeling stressed, I will talk about how getting to the root of the stressor is important. Someone else may be training for a marathon and a food journal can help a nutritionist or dietitian make sure they’re getting all the proper nutrients their body needs.
What to log into a food journal
Here’s what you should be writing down in your food journal:
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What you’re eating and drinking
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How you feel (happy, sad, lonely, stressed, busy…)
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Where you’re eating (home, work, while walking, in the car…)
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Who you’re eating with
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How you feel after you eat (What positive or negative effects do you notice? Do you feel energized? Tired? Bloated? Were you unable to sleep that night?)
All of this is important to log because, again, how you feel is about so much more than what’s on your plate. The circumstances surrounding when you eat matter greatly, too.
3 ways to keep a food journal
1. Write it out
One common way to keep a food journal is in a notebook with space to log the five above points mentioned previously. There are also food journal templates online that have all the prompts listed out, so they can be helpful to use to make sure you don’t leave anything out.
2. Take a photo
Sometimes, you may not have time right at the moment to write down everything recommended. Maybe you’re out to dinner with friends, eating during a work meeting, or simply don’t want to do it then and there. In those cases, try taking a photo of your meal so you can answer the prompts later. I actually always recommend taking a photo anyway, because nothing is clearer than a photo.
3. Use an app
There are also apps that make keeping a food journal easy; all you need is your phone. FoodView is one app that’s free and also allows photos to be uploaded. Dining Note is another free app, which provides a no-frills way to journal about meals and also movement, if that’s something you want to incorporate into your journal as well.
Food journals should be personal, so create a structure and template that works for you. Most importantly, it should make you feel better, not worse. Food journals are not meant to feel guilty or shame about anything you eat. Instead, they’re meant to be a tool used to help determine what makes you feel your best.
Lifestyles that would benefit from food journaling
While anyone can benefit from food journaling, there are certain lifestyles that should be food journaling daily. Once you recognize that you fall within one of these lifestyles, you can begin your food journaling experience and be one step closer to a healthy lifestyle. However if you don’t relate with one of these lifestyles, you might find that you could still benefit from keeping a food journal.
Lack of nutrition
Those who lack proper nutrition are often eating too much of one food group, and not enough of the ones meant to give your body the vitamins and minerals it needs. They may not even realize they’re depriving their body. They may even just be eating too many processed foods, and not enough fruits and vegetables. Those who lack proper nutrition could also not be eating enough calories, which in turn could lead to a variety of other health and wellness issues.
WHAT CAN BE DONE
Keeping a food diary will allow you to analyze what foods you are not eating enough of, or which ones you’re eating too much. It can also show whether you are eating enough of each food group or not. If your food diary consists of mainly carbohydrates and proteins, then you’re not getting the vitamins you need from fruits and vegetables.
Mindless eaters
Those who mindlessly eat can often find themselves eating in the car commuting to work, at the desk in front of a computer screen, or on the couch watching TV. They typically eat by shoveling their food down regardless of whether they’re still hungry or not. Mindless eaters often eat for reasons other than hunger, like satisfying emotional needs, relieving stress, or coping with emotions such as sadness, anxiety, loneliness, or boredom.
WHAT CAN BE DONE
Try eating your meals with all your attention rather than on auto pilot. This means not eating while you’re reading, looking at your phone, watching TV, or planning what you’ll do later. Try practicing mindful eating for short, five-minute periods at first and gradually build up from there. You can also practice mindful eating when you’re making your shopping list too.
Fatigue prone
Those who are prone to fatigue, or who are constantly feeling foggy, typically find themselves feeling tired no matter what. They might be eating large meals throughout the day, and then soon after find themselves in a type of food coma which leads to them feeling fatigued. Those who are fatigue prone may also be eating too many processed foods too often, and not giving their body the fuel it needs to be energized.
WHAT CAN BE DONE
By writing down how you feel after you eat, you will be able to more closely identify which food cause you to feel more fatigued. You may find that having a green salad with quinoa and vegetables for lunch leaves you feeling energized, while heated up processed foods make you feel more sluggish. After enough entries, you’ll be able to tailor your meals to help you feel less fatigued.
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Try keeping a food journal for a couple weeks and see what you learn. Using it as a learning tool to observe your portions, habits, and the types of foods you eat will help you cultivate more mindfulness.
Extra tips for keeping a food journal
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When you are logging your food, try asking yourself why you’re eating. If it’s anything other than you’re hungry, write it down.
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Make note of the time of day you are eating, and how many times a day you’re eating.
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It’s often best to keep your food thoughts short and sweet, unless you want to get more into the details of how you are feeling and why you chose the food you did for future reference.
