Top 3 Reasons Food Journaling Works

There are so many different ways to practice healthy eating. Some people enjoy weighing their food, counting calories, counting macros, intuitive eating - the list goes on. 

What happens when I have a client come to me who feels like they've tried it all and nothing works? They are tired of counting, whether it's the calories or the macros. Tracking involves weighing your food, knowing exactly how much you are eating, investing in a food scale, making sure you track every single thing you eat and put it into an app, like My Fitness Pal. While tracking can be helpful and works for some people, it can also be exhausting, overwhelming, can become unhealthy for certain clients.

So how can we practice awareness around what we eat without A) being on a diet, and B) feeling overly obsessive with counting every meal?

This is where food journaling comes in.

Food Journaling is an awesome way to take notes on what you eat without the tracking:

1. You can reflect and review what you're eating and how much quality foods you're having without feeling "obsessive"

2. You can start to see habits and patterns you may have have been aware of (it's all about creating awareness!)

3. You can see how many times per day you are eating, and how often throughout the day you are eating and see how it directly correlates to when you feel energetic, when you feel lethargic, when you usually go for that second cup of coffee...

The habit of journaling can help you realize why you might be reaching for snacks throughout the day. 

When you go to jot down that handful of crackers you had, you might go "Wait, why did I eat that? I wasn't even hungry". Journaling can open up our blindspots more so than quickly typing something into an app. It just depends on how you operate best and what fits your lifestyle.