Keeping a food journal can make or break your quest to get in the best shape of your life.
Does any of this sound familiar?
A husband and wife make a pact. They are going to get in shape, and they are going to do it together, as a team. Shoulder to shoulder they stand; they’ve got this.
A month down the road, wifey is looking a little fitter, but hubby has noticed his jeans tightening. She looks over at dinner, and they talk about it.
Hubby: “I don’t get it, I’m working my butt off, doing 45 minutes every day on the treadmill, we eat the same things, but you look great, what gives?”
Wifey, with an uncomfortable smile: “Babe, you look, um…fine. I’m sure things will turn for you. Keep workin’ hard, sport.”
The man (let’s call him Eugene) has good intentions, and he is exerting real effort to change his body composition. Unfortunately, he’s oblivious to his own habits, built up over a lifetime. He eats breakfast with his wife and displays discipline in portion control. His salmon and broccoli dinners are on point.
So what’s going on with Eugene?
He grabs a chicken salad daily for lunch at the office, one topped with fried chicken strips, ranch dressing and a white dinner roll on the side. He thinks he’s on track by replacing his usual Dr. Peppers, not knowing that apple juice is high in calories and sugar. He has 17 gummy worms here and half a PB & J there as an afternoon snack because a fitness guru told him he needs to eat every three hours.
It’s easy to be lulled into an “I’m doing this right” trance, and find yourself frustrated by the lack of progress. To fix his predicament, he should follow a few steps I’ll pass on to you, just in case you share some eerie similarities to our pal Eugene.
- Keep track of everything that you ingest for a full week. Include times and locations of consumption.
- Be accountable, authentic and precise with yourself when recording amounts. Hard quantities are important. If you eat 36 Skittles, don’t say “I had a few Skittles.”
- Record calories. Perform a web search to find the calorie value of the foods and drinks you’ve had each day.
Food journaling’s greatest value is in the education it provides. Use this information to adjust as you go. Pay attention to where you’re consuming more calories than you thought. If your jeans are tight, try replacing your apple juice with water and your Skittles with a hard-boiled egg.
The more information you have about your behavior and the food you consume, the more equipped you’ll be to make better choices.
Throw a sample day in the comments below, and I’ll write a post soon with suggestions for a few of them.
Looking forward,
Kap
This is something that I have started to do this year. If you have an IPAD or even a computer, you can use an app called Lose It, or go to loseit.com. It has been great and has enabled me to know what foods are bad for me.
I’ve found myfitnesspal app to be beneficial to me.
Agreed. Even if you don’t hit all of your calorie goals every day it is helpful to keep track of exactly what you are eating. Very helpful when eating at restaurants for realizing how much you would normally eat. Makes you more aware at the very least.
Problem with MyFitnessPal is that there aren’t as many serving size options as in other programs. And some of the counts are misleading. For example, for a bagel they list a single serving. However the count is clearly for a medium sized bagel and if you are buying in a bakery you definitely aren’t getting a medium. So you can clearly go way above your calorie count if you don’t realize which sizes are off. Plus you can’t enter grams on many items. That’s how I do most of my weighing. I prefer FitDay. It has many of it’s own problems but I find it much more flexible.
I agree to some extent. You can change the serving sizes by entering decimal values above or below 1 serving in order to more accurately enter your food. I haven’t been using it for a very long time but my wife has been using it a little longer than I have and she hasn’t had too many issues. We haven’t done a lot of weighing of our foods so far since I’ve been using it.
Hi Gabe,
I’m really enjoying your blog. I’m a former college baseball player, but have since graduated and now work full time. However, I still workout just as much as I did when I was playing, and I want to keep building muscle. I started keeping track of my daily diet, and here’s a sample day:
8:15 am: 2 instant oatmeal packets, 1/2 cup of blueberries
10:00 am: protein bar, apple
11:30 am: 2 PB&J sandwiches, individual Greek yogurt cup
6:30 pm: bowl of chicken noodle soup
7:00 pm: pasta w/ meat sauce
10:00 pm: whey protein shake after workout
Here are the nutrient totals I kept track of:
sugar – 94.5g
fat – 101.5 g
carbohydrates – 406g
protein – 222g
calories – 3,427
Any input would be greatly appreciated. Also, I am about 5’8″, 175 lbs.
Thanks!
I use myfitnesspal, and I find my intake is much better when I complete daily journals. I am a 56-year-old woman who has been overweight and under-fit all her life. Trying to make permanent changes to my life affecting both those things.
Typical day:
First thing-half banana
workout-right now doing the new P90x3
B-protein shake w/fruit blended in, maybe the other 1/2 banana
mid-morning snack usually many cut-up fresh veggies with hummus or low-fat ricotta
L-green salad with grilled chicken, plain tuna or hard-boiled eggs, olive-oil and vinegar
mid-afternoon usually a piece of fruit, 2 clementines or 1/2 green apple with almond butter
D-Grilled something, maybe pork tenderloin, 1/2 c brown rice or quinoa, steamed or roasted veggies.
I also try to get a 2mi or so run in late afternoon, depending on weather and road conditions. Otherwise interval work on the treadmill.
I have lost 35 lbs in 7 months without “dieting,” have around 15 more to go.
PS Love the blog, am sharing it with some of my fitness buddies. Also, die-hard Red Sox fan, loved you with the Sox 🙂
Kap,
What’s the best place to find what my target for daily calorie intake should be? Thanks.