Heavy? Grab A Pan & Begin A Personal Food Journal
Most of us eat often throughout the day – and most of us pay so little attention to what we eat that we are hard pressed to try to remember just exactly what was in our last meal. In other words, it’s virtually impossible to remember all the food we’ve eaten. If you sincerely want to improve your eating routines it becomes vital to consider what you are putting into your mouth. You may well wish to consider documenting everything you eat in a personal food journal.
It’s a rule of life that habits are tough to change. If we’re in a rut of ending mindlessly changing to become a mindful eater won’t be easy so don’t expect it to be. We’re all very busy and we will resist the discipline of writing down everything we eat. And some people complain that food is always on their minds once they begin keeping a food journal.
If you commit to keeping a food journal, be prepared for a struggle. Just as becoming aware of your eating isn’t easy, neither is revealing your habits to yourself by writing them down. There will be days when you fail and if you know that, you will be less likely to give up. Because make not mistake, there are multiple rewards for making this effort and persisting until you succeed.
1. Have you ever been around people who insist that they “eat like a bird” – yet you see them frequently gorging on rich, heavy meals and desserts. They may not be lying when they insist that they eat very little because they may be very unaware of what they’re actually doing. You are most likely the same. If you don’t understand why you’re overweight or why your cholesterol is too high or why you feel sluggish and bloated, then examining you actual habits, rather than what you think about them, may be very revealing. It’s worth finding out, isn’t it?
2. Lots of time we eat when we’re not hungry. There are a vast number of emotional reasons to stuff something in our mouths and these flimsy reasons range from deep depression (eating to ”feel better”) to the most joyous event that, naturally, calls for a food celebration. None of us wants to confess that we are emotional eaters, but keeping a food journal may well reveal these bad habits. Once we recognize that we’re misusing food, we can learn to deal with any emotional issues in a more constructive way.
3. You may well create changes in your diet that improve your health but cause no personal suffering. By using your food journal, you can easily take a look at substitutes that are better for your health and fitness. For instance, if you eat a considerable amount of pasta, turning to whole wheat pasta and decreasing your portion size can lower your cholesterol and your weight. You could possibly modify one recipe at a time and notice how effectively your brand new behaviors are working out for you.
4. It is very possible to be thin – and unhealthy. Someone who is stays thin by eating very little, yet what they eat is potato chips and cokes, is certain to be missing out on important nutrients provided by food. Constipation, for example, is a sure sign of a deficiency in both fiber and water. Those who eat only “whites” – whit rice, white bread, white pasta – and certain to have a deficiency in B vitamins. Many people think that taking vitamin pills means that they can ignore nutrition and eat anything they chose but this is false. Pills won’t make up for nutrient shortages.
If you’d truly like some changes in your life, commit to keeping a food journal for just one measly week. But here’s the catch … every time you miss a meal, start over. Continue until you have truly recorded all of your food for one week. This discipline, and the information you obtain from it, will enable you to make serious changes in your life.
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