How To Keep A Food Journal
Okay, so you know how many calories you’re supposed to eat.
But how do you know if you’re taking in all those calories?
If you’re not keeping a food journal, then chances are that you aren’t. For all you know, you may be over- or undereating your requirements. For someone trying to lose weight, overeating is no bueno! The same applies for someone trying to gain weight who’s undereating.
If that’s you, someone who doesn’t have a food journal, you should probably start keeping one.
I mean, if you’re really serious about weight loss, for instance.
Fuck, it’s not like dieters who keep food journals have been found to lose double the weight of those who don’t.
It’s probably because food journals help build awareness by providing a record of what’s going inside your mouth, in addition to fostering personal accountability due to the permanence of documentation and the ability to look back at your choices. Food journals also teach the invaluable skill of making items fit your total daily calorie allotment.
So you should probably log your food.
I mean, if you’re really serious about weight loss.
But how do you keep a food journal?
By continuing to read along.
THAT’S HOW!!!
ONE
Buy a digital food scale.
On account of the fact that scales measure shit, you’re going to use your spanking new digital food scale to weigh EVERY morsel of food and drop of liquid that goes down your throat.
And I mean EVERYTHING, from condiments to juices.1Well, only certain types of juices, you nasty motherfucker!
TWO
Log foods.
Enter EVERYTHING you eat and drink into a spreadsheet, food tracking app, or go prehistoric with a pen and paper pad. This can be done either as you’re about to eat and drink, after the fact, or, heavens forbid, if you have the foresight to plan ahead.
And I mean input EVERYTHING.
So if you drown your chicken in buffalo sauce because you don’t know how to properly season your food, INPUT THE GODDAMN MOTHERFUCKING SAUCE!!!
THREE
Plan ahead.
The option was just given to log stuff after a meal or snack, if not as you’re about to eat or drink it. But that’s a surefire way to look at your journal or food tracking app at the end of the day and see that you’re a bajillion grams over the allotment for one macro and a zillion grams short of another.
So ignore what I told you in step #2.
DO NOT TRACK YOUR MACROS ON A MEAL TO MEAL BASIS OR WAIT UNTIL THE NIGHTTIME TO START INPUTTING SHIT!!!
Instead, plan your meals out.
At the beginning of the week or before bed every night
(1) decide what foods you’re going to eat for all your scheduled meals,
(2) plug those foods into your journal or food tracking app, and
(3) fidget with the serving sizes until your desired macro ratios are reached for each meal for that day.
That way, you know the exact portions of food that you’re supposed to eat at each meal. Other than saving you from praying at the end of the day that everything tallies up to meet your requirements, care to guess another advantage? Yup, advance planning also removes the guesswork of figuring out what to eat as your day goes along!
Setting time aside for this might sound overwhelming and time-consuming, but you’ll soon realize that it’s so easy a caveman can do it. Why? Because you’ll discover that your food choices aren’t as varied or as exotic as you think. You’ll see that you eat the same 15-20 food items over and over again and become used to remembering what different food combinations work to hit your calorie and macro targets. Either that, or you’ll just eat the same shit every day, which is what I and many others who easily stay within their macros do.
Oh, but you have a dinner or some other function to attend?
Most restaurants have their menus and nutritional information online. So select what you’re going to order and plug it in. If the restaurant doesn’t have that information available or you don’t know where you’re going to dine, then still plan your day out but leave a budget of calories. When at the location, order an item that fits within the calories you set aside and plug it into your food tracker. If your record-keeping is by antiquated means, then take a photo of the dish so you can write it down later.
FOUR
Be honest.
If you cheat on your diet by binging on a Girl Scout troop’s entire supply of fundraising cookies, then you better INPUT THOSE MOTHERFUCKING COOKIES!!!
That means you shouldn’t only input the items that paint a picture of you staying within your calorie limits and exclude the snacks and other bullshit that may very well place you over your daily calorie needs.
Engaging in such morally reprehensible behavior of lying to yourself about how compliant you are sort of defeats the purpose of even having a food journal, which is a daily log of what you eat and drink every day.
So yes, when I say “weigh and log everything that goes into your motherfucking mouth”, that means WEIGH AND LOG EVERYTHING THAT GOES INTO YOUR MOTHERFUCKING MOUTH!!!2This is basically a restatement of step #2. Why it’s so important and bears repeating is that if you’re supposed to consume 1500 calories to lose weight and you track EVERYTHING THAT GOES INTO YOUR MOUTH and see that you’re routinely taking in 1750 calories thanks to cookies and buffalo sauce, maybe it might click that the excess calories are why your fat loss efforts aren’t going as you’d like. And then once it clicks, maybe you might take it upon yourself to start consuming no more than the 1500 calories you’re required to.
It’s wishful thinking, I know.
But I’m a dreamer.
FIVE
Repeat.
Weigh and log EVERYTHING you eat and drink EVERY…SINGLE…DAY UNTIL YOU REACH YOUR MOTHERFUCKING GOAL!!! Staying on top of what you’re consuming isn’t just a today or a tomorrow or a whenever you feel like it thing.
Nah, it’s something you do EVERY…SINGLE…DAY UNTIL YOU REACH YOUR MOTHERFUCKING GOAL!!!
As you see, keeping a food journal is simple.
But most people won’t do it because weighing and logging EVERYTHING you eat and drink is too time-consuming, at least that’s what they think.3The more you do something, the more efficient you get at it. This holds true with food tracking. In a study of dieters in a weight loss program, those who logged their food spent an average of 23 minutes out of their day doing so. That was in the first month. The same task only took about 15 minutes six months later. Those who didn’t log their food spent an average of zero minutes on that task, but they didn’t lose as much weight as those who took the precious moments out of their lives to do so.
Seeing that it just takes a few seconds to record shit as you’re about to consume it or a few minutes at night to plan out the next day in its entirety, I have to agree with them.
Fuck, people live far too busy lives between their TV watching and web surfing to maintain a food journal!
While I sympathize and am in complete agreement that weighing and logging EVERYTHING you eat and drink only complicates your already complicated life of TV watching and searching for even more depraved internet porn, you have to find a way.
I mean, if you’re really serious about weight loss.
Wait, seriously?!?!
Doing the above is too much of a drain?!
You’ll be glad to hear that there’s something less time-consuming and possibly even more effective than keeping a traditional food journal.
Instead, what you can keep is a photo log on Instagram.
A study suggests that taking pics of your food and sharing them on social media serves just as good as a food journal or app for tracking food intake. In fact, people find taking pics of their food more convenient and less monotonous than writing or typing everything. As a result, they’re more likely to be consistent with this sort of tracking.
A visual account of EVERYTHING you eat in a day can also help you better assess patterns and spot trouble. As Sean Munson, one of the researchers, says, “When you only have one data point for a pizza or donut, it’s easy to rationalize that away as a special occasion. But when you see a whole tiled grid of them, you have to say to yourself, ‘Wait, I don’t actually have that many special days.’”
Lastly, taking pics of EVERYTHING helps with accountability. Having to snap a pic of EVERYTHING you eat can make you reticent to eat what you’re not supposed to eat because you have to take a photo of it and share it with others so they too can see what you’ve eaten. Ahhhhhhhh, digital peer pressure!
So there you go, get your Gordon Parks on!