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How to Stick to a Healthy Diet? Try a Food Journal.
Nutrition | November 08, 2016
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.
Private Member |
switzerland/, france
I hate food journal, I hate cooking , but I love eating and love health. still not found how to deal with that.
It would help if I only had to cook one meal for the whole family and we had dinner together around a table like normal family are supposed to do. I lost any motivation to cook. My biggest dream if I were rich is to have a chef/cook for me.
maybe one day it will get better.
Private Member |
curitiba, parana, brazil
Laila…you are so funny….I had to laugh although I know you were serious. Cooking is like exercise, in my humble opinion, once you start doing it, you will feel like doing it more and more. Start cooking simple things, just sometimes and when you realize you will be cooking everyday, all meals. Of course, it does take time and sometimes it is boring to think what to cook, but most of times it is fun to try new recipes and baking (the part I like the most). You can cook grains in bulk and store them in the fridge(frozen it) so you just have to warm it when you want to eat adding little of water. I do it with lentils, beens and all grains. Rice normally I also cook more and store in fridge for 2, 3 days. I just cook daily vegetables and eggs. Even break and cakes I cook more and store it. Cakes does not last many days but break I keep frozen also. Try to make life simple and cool…before you can have a chef…hahahah…see you, take care.
Private Member |
switzerland/, france
oh Fernanda, everytime I see your food picture I want to eat them. I try to motivate my son to cook, so we can have a positive attitude towards food. My husbands thinks he will end up as a cook and calls him “chef Ramsay”.
My daughter likes to bake, but doesn’t eat any of it. I end up eating the whole cake (which is really not the intention).
Most of the time I eat raw, quick things.
now that it is getting cold (snow arrived), I will start to do stew again with slowcooker. I like to throw a bunch of things in the pot and let by itself.
I am sure that once I have a renovated kitchen it will help.
Private Member |
curitiba, parana, brazil
Hi Laila, surely a new kitchen will help. Ok, so few tips…let your husband cooks if he enjoys and if someone can eat the food also…hahaha. My son loves to helps me but he is small so he mess up the things yet but I also try to involve him showing that I prepare everything at home and that is healthier. About the cake I also had the same problem here so nowadays I do half of the recipe so that the cake will be very small…or I use muffins tray and I prepare 6 muffins at time so they will not spoil, they will not last to spoil and when they are over I prepare more. So just reduce the size of the cake. Keep going and do not give up of taking care of your diet. You have a nice body, treat it well with nice food. See you, take care girl!
Private Member |
Amen!
Private Member |
washington, dc, usa
I share your sentiments.
Private Member |
melbourne, australia
I definitely would try it!!! Thank you for the tips!
I started to do it several times, but I forget to make a photo)) and when I remember, the plate is already empty)))
Private Member |
charlotte, nc, usa
Would it be possible for you to add a food journal component to your site? Maybe under our account setting there could be a food journal and then we could choose to make it public or not? I feel like food journals can be helpful when one day is laid out instead of random photos on my phone. I was using an app called YouFood for a while and its incredibly simple. You take a picture and it files it under today’s date. You can add notes to it, like how you felt or what was in it and if it’s something you eat alot you can save it and re-post the photo. You can also take photos of your workouts, so your whole day can be tracked through photographs. It’s pretty neat, and talking about it I’m probably going to give it another try. Anyways, thank you for sharing your food journal with us!
Private Member |
nj
This is a good idea. We can share recipes with each other and coach each other on. It should stay only within Zgym members though.
Private Member |
Thank you for the app suggestion! Since moving to the us I have not been able to find an app as simple to use as MealSnap (available only in Canada). This is so awesome! On day 2!
Private Member |
I am so doing this starting tomorrow… thanks Zuzka!!!
Private Member |
Funny that you just wrote this post…I just started doing this. I take pictures of my meals and I use evernote to save them.
Private Member |
I started keeping a food journal, per your suggestion, years ago, and it change my whole thought process about eating and my goals! I love it, and look foward to writing down my last nutritious meal or snack. I love the acountability factor it ads! I have never used instagram, but I have tons of pads of paper in every closet! haha! It’s interesting to see how my taste and nutrition goals have changed and improved along with my fitness over the last few years.
Private Member |
I think this is a genius idea.. I usually make my weekly menus one week in advance to keep organised and so I know what to buy every saturdays…
Then I just correct my meals accordingly. But this is a great way to know what you eat
And I wrote in red all alcohol and bad stuff I also eat so I know by the end of the week where I stand…
Private Member |
Well, I think when I have food in front of me I will eat it immediately and I will forget about taking picture.. but it sounds a good method to keep track of portions. Especially when I snack around. Then I can eat a lot without planning it and even without realizing. But I m pretty sure that it will be hard to keep up with a journal in a systematic way.
Private Member |
germany
I have been using an fddb app (google play store) for weeks now. It is quite addictive because it’s so easy. You can simply scan the food you are using via barcode and indicate (at least roughly as I dont weigh my food) the amount taken. But what I like best is that the database really lists _everything. I have found the most uncommon products there, and they even indicate the correct portion size or tell you what it should be!
It also counts macros, calories, burnt cals and water intake. I never have to count anything, because the app does it for me and takes out all the guesswork. Plus, I noticed that I dont eat enough protein. I started with as little as 40g per day! Now I can manage 80, but it’s still not enough. Without the app, I wouldnt have known. Hence, I can really very much recommend it. 🙂
Private Member |
I started my fit and healthy journey after 40 publicly to inspire as many women as possible to exercise and eat healthy. Zuzka you have been my inspiration for years. I was always afraid to do your workouts and was never that strong so I improvised. Now, I signed up because you have beginner workouts, that are not so hard. My fitness level now is intermediate and due to my knee injury I can’t do too much jumping. Can you please do more easier workouts. Thank you for your hard work. 💪💪💪