My Food Journal: A Tale of Triumph, Junior Mints, and a Little Bit of Shame

It seems that everyone has an opinion on how to lose weight, how to be healthy.  For every study telling you to focus on a low carb diet, there is another study telling you that you should cut out meat.  No matter what you're doing, someone else has a better idea, and they're happy to tell you all about it.  I'm going to share a tool with you that I used to scoff at.  I'm not saying this will do you any good; it just happens to be helping me.

Food!

Almost three weeks ago, I started keeping a food journal.  Every morning, I weigh myself, and it goes in the book.  Everything I eat gets recorded.  The calorie and fat content are also calculated and noted.  If I make it to the gym that day, my time and distance gets written down.*  If we have a "Treat Day", that gets marked down.**

Does this actually help?  For me, yeah.  I get embarrassed when I see what I have eaten some days.  When I take the time to figure out calories, I am sometimes shamed.***  It's not a bad shaming though, as I'm the only one who knows.  It just encourages me to think about what I'm eating.

Because I like pretty colors, I have all of my meals color coded.  Additionally, my workout gets color coded to match the nearest meal.  If I go to the gym in the morning, it gets noted in the same color as breakfast.  It lets me see at a glance what I've been achieving.  I also have a specific color for snacks, so I can see when I get a bit weak.

Keeping a food journal is a lot of work, but it's keeping me on my toes about what I consume.  Some days are better than others, but all in all, I"m eating less than I used to.  When I have a snack, like Junior Mints, I don't eat a box.  I eat half of a serving.  I don't lie in my food book, and that's helping me to make bigger, more important changes.****

*I'm only using the treadmill right now.  Someday, I hope to branch out, but you have to start somewhere.

**Treat yo self!

***Those bacon cheeseburgers were amazing though.  Mmmm....

****For example, the two of us haven't gone out to eat alone in over two weeks.  Trust me, this is a huge accomplishment.