I have been keeping a food journal for months.

Keeping my daily journal helps me stick to a solid diet for my body and goals. If you’re not familiar with the kinds of food I prefer to eat, make sure and check out this blog entry. It really covers what I eat and why I eat it. And I say this in my blog entry but I feel like it bears repeating here: You can use my personal food journal or recipes from my website (hundreds of ’em!) as a template for your own meal plan, but I really suggest you eat according to your own body-type and goals. Nutrition is really a very personal matter.

Make sure you do your research and plan carefully. It’s always worth it to sit down at some point during the weekend and write out what you’ll eat during the upcoming week. Make a thoughtful grocery list and plan ahead for times when you’ll need to pack food to take with you. It’s always helpful to have a few back-ups in your cabinet in case of meal emergencies, things that won’t go bad and come together  quickly. For example, I always like to have some tuna fish in my pantry. It’s tasty, high-protein, low carb, low calorie, easy and quick to make, and will last forever as long as it’s unopened.

But back to the food journal. Here’s how I do mine. Every time I eat something I take a snap of it on Instagram Stories. Do you guys know about this feature? If not let me quickly fill you in.

Instagram Stories are kinda like Snapchat. They’re temporary vids or pics. You can post them throughout the day and at the end of the day they disappear. But I prefer to save my food journal and post the pictures later on my website. So I just use the feature to quickly snap pictures of what I’m eating and add text. Then I save them to my camera roll on my phone. Voila! An instant food journal!

If you’re still lost, here’s a brief how-to. To access Instagram Stories open your Instagram app (if you don’t have Instagram, download it for free onto your device form the app store). To open the Stories feature, you can hit the plus button on the top left side of your home screen or swipe left in your feed. Take a picture of your meal and add text by tapping the text icon (Aa). Once you’ve written a brief description save the picture with text to your camera roll by hitting the download button in the bottom right corner of your screen. It will say, “Saved”. Then  your food journal is right there on your camera roll. If you’re confused just scroll down to the pictures in the blog entry.I referenced above, they’re perfect examples for you.

Sometimes just being aware of what we’re eating can help us to change our bad habits. Maybe you weren’t really aware of how many times a day you reached for the chip bag. Or maybe you had no idea of what your carb intake looked like.

Keeping a food journal also helps keep me accountable for what I plan to eat each week. I don’t want to have to look back though my journal and feel disappointed in myself. If it would help you to make your journal public, you can do that too! Just post your pics on Instagram Stories as well as saving them.

What do you all think? Are you gonna try it? Do you already keep a food journal? If so, have you ever used the IG method? Let me know! I’d love to hear your thoughts.