Tracking Your Food: The Proper Way To Do It

By Hattie Stratton


When you begin your diet one of many things you will learn right away is that maintaining a food journal is very helpful. Keeping your meal journal not only helps you see clearly what you are consuming, it helps you see what you are not eating. For example, after keeping a food journal for a few days, you might see that you are not consuming very many vegetables but that you are consuming lots of sugar and bad carbohydrates. Having it all written down may help you determine the elements of your diet that need to change as well as how much exercise you need to get to make sure that you burn enough calories to keep your waistline in check.

But let's say you write almost everything down but no excess weight drop off of you? There is a proper way and a incorrect way to monitor your food. There is far more to food journaling than creating a listing of what you eat during the day. You need to write down other crucial pieces of information as well. Here are some of the elements you need to do to be more productive at food tracking.

Be as particular as you can when you write down what you eat. You have to do more than simply write down "salad" into your food record. Write down every one of the ingredients in the salad and also the type of dressing you used. You ought to include the volume of the food you take in. "Cereal" is not beneficial, although "one cup Shredded Wheat" can be. It is vital to remember that the larger your servings, the more calories you will be eating so you need to know just how much of every thing you actually eat so that you can figure out how many calories you will need to work off.

Record the time of day you eat items. This will help you find out just what times of day you feel the most hungry, when you usually reach for snacks and then you can learn how to deal with those times. You'll see, for example, that although you eat lunch at the exact same time every day, you also--without fail--start to snack as little as an hour later, every day. This will even enable you to identify the times when you start to eat simply to give yourself something to do. This is important because those are moments that you can pick out other things to fill your time with than food.



Write down your feelings while you eat. This helps you to explain to you whether or not you turn to food as a reaction to emotional issues. It will even identify the meals you choose when you are in certain moods. Many of us will reach for junk foods when we are disappointed, angry or depressed and will be more likely to choose healthier options when we are happy or content. Not only will this let you notice when you reach for specific foods based on your mood, it will help you find ways to keep healthier (but similar) alternatives on hand for those same moods and help you figure out whether or not someone professional can help you deal with the issues that are sending you towards certain foods in the first place.




About the Author:



No comments:

Post a Comment