Why I Track my Food

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 is definitely some reasons to my madness. 

*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. 

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 for the most part I have a pretty solid/healthy relationship with food.  But this doesn't mean that I am always bang on when it comes to portion sizes, eating enough vegetables or ensuring I am getting enough fiber.  I am a nutritionist, but NO I am not perfect when it comes to anything, and that includes my nutrition. 

So when it comes down to it I use food journaling or tracking (or whatever we want to call it) for the same exact 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.

Useful information you learn when food journaling:

1. Perspective. What am I actually eating? This might sound a little weird, but most of our meals are quite forgettable.   Aside from a handful of truly memorable meals in our lifetime our brains don't really feel it necessary to remember that turkey sandwich you ate for lunch four days ago.  So, when it comes to working with a nutritionist or trying to self-identify eating patterns, tracking what we eat becomes super important to gathering this information. 
2. Accountability.  Plain and simple, writing out what you are consuming in a given day helps to provide you with accountability, whether or not someone else is looking at this log, the act of writing it down makes us be more conscious of the choices we are making. 
3. Eating enough.  When it comes to tracking our food most of us have this perception that it is to ensure that you aren't over eating, and sure this type of tool can be used for this, but more often than not in my practice I use food journaling to make sure clients are eating enough! Yes, even for fat loss clients. 
4. What do I like eating?  This one is more for me as your nutritionist, but can also be applied to you.  If you find that you really enjoy having pizza or brownies or whatever it might be, perhaps there is a way to make a food that is providing you with more of something you are lacking, vegetables I'm looking at you.   I'm not saying ditch the pizza, I'm saying maybe we make it from home and load it up with veg or maybe we try those black bean brownies everyone was talking about 4 years ago.
5. Eating patterns.  This is a big one! Knowing when you are eating, if you are actually skipping meals and replacing them with cups of coffee, or forgoing the snack in favor of just pushing past hunger for 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 actually 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 have been hoping for food journaling might be the right tool for you.   Try it for a few days and see what type of feedback do you get?  Are you getting 6-8 servings of vegetables every day? Are you actually drinking enough water? Do you actually 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 notes document on your phone if that's easier.  No need for a fancy app (paid or free), just keep it nice and simple. Sure tracking macros and calories can be helpful information, but for most people it is too much information and ends up over complicating the habits/results we are trying to learn about. 

Keep it simple, be gentle with yourself and see what you can learn.