Is food journaling right for you?

If you have a weight loss or weight gain goal, keeping a food journal can be extremely helpful. Your food journal can be used to track your intake and help you stay on track towards your health and fitness goals.

Food journals are a much more cost-effective way to track your progress if you aren’t ready (or don’t want) to invest in a health coach. It’s basically a journal that you can keep to write down everything that you eat.

Alongside writing the foods that you are eating, you can note down the time of the meal and your hunger levels before and after eating. Many people also choose to note down any emotions or physical sensations that they feel before, during, and after eating.

Now we’ve covered exactly what food journaling is, let’s discuss the pros and cons of keeping this type of journal.

Pros

• You can become more in tune with your hunger cues, which can be particularly helpful if you have a history of eating disorders or disordered eating and you struggle to identify your natural cues.
• You can stay on track to achieve your health and fitness goals by making it easier for you to see what’s going well and what needs to be changed with regard to your nutrition.
• Specific emotions and thought patterns around certain foods and mealtimes can be more easily identified. If you notice negative emotions around certain foods, you can delve deeper into why these foods are causing you to feel this way.
• If certain foods are causing you to have more digestive troubles, you can identify them and work to eliminate them.

Cons

• It takes up part of your day, and you need to fill it out at every meal and snack. This isn’t always possible if you’re busy or if you’re out of the house for several meals at a time.
• Keeping a food journal can cause extra stress for those who have suffered or are suffering from an eating disorder.
• It may make negative thoughts and emotions around food worse than they were before. When you are writing negative emotions down in a journal, it can highlight them in your mind and cause you to become hyper-focused on them.
• It can emphasize feelings of guilt and shame or obsessions around food.
• You can become preoccupied with food and think about what you’re going to eat at your next meal or snack, which can cause extra stress and anxiety around food.

Key Take-Away

Food journaling can be a very powerful tool in your nutrition journey.  To keep it positive and effective, remember that the journal is not a source of judgment about your food behaviors but rather a strategy to empower you to reach your goals and feel your best.