Tracking Your Food Intake

When it comes to nutrition and eating habits, we tend to think we eat less then we actually do. We have heard it many times before, where the member will say they don’t understand how they are gaining weight and that they don’t eat very much. But unless you are actually tracking what you eat, it’s hard to really know.

This is where tracking your intake and a food journal can come in handy. Completing just a 3-day food journal will give you a lot of insight into your eating habits and your overall food intake. Just be sure to eat as you normally would and not hold back because you know you are recording it. Try doing 2 weekdays and 1 weekend day to get the best snapshot of your eating habits. A lot of the times our eating routines and habits change on the weekends and a lot of damage can occur from even just one day, so it is important to include the weekend.

You can also do it as an every day thing if you are someone who likes to do it and find that it helps keep you on track. Just the act of recording your food intake can act as an accountability tool.

To track your intake all you need to do is every time you eat or drink something, record the time of day, what you ate and how much. Include everything, even if you just sneak a bit of something, write it down. These little bites can add up, and a lot of times you don’t even realize how often you are doing it, which is another great reason to track. There are apps available to do this as well if you would rather go that route. My Fitness Pal is one of the most popular.

Don’t want to be bothered recording your meals? Try just taking a picture with your phone of your meals and drinks before you consume them. The phone will date and time stamp the photo and it will be easy to go back through the day and see how much and how often you ate.

Once you have the data from a few days of food intake you can then begin to make some discoveries about your nutrition. Maybe you are eating more then you thought, maybe your late-night snacks are adding up to a lot of extra calories you didn’t realize, or maybe you don’t eat very much protein. Maybe you are eating better than you thought! At the very least you will learn something about yourself that you can use to improve your eating habits.

This only works if you are first, at a point where you are ready to make a change, and second, if you actually implement the needed changes.

You don’t have to do this forever either. Going through this exercise will help you learn how you are currently eating, where you need to make some changes and help to learn how to build appropriate meals for you and your goals.

If you go through the exercise and need some help to determine where to make changes, let us know. We are here to help!