See that notebook up there? That’s my latest food journal. Yup, I’m back to good old paper and pencil and I’ll tell you why.
Actually, I’ll tell you 5 reasons why…
I needed a change. Over the years I have food journaled a plethora of ways: paper, spreadsheet, email, twitter, instagram. All work great but if I’m bored with the technique then I tend to start slipping. Sometimes simply changing my method re-energizes and motivates me.It works for my current situation. Each one of the methods I listed above was born out of necessity. When I taught at the community college emailing was perfect because I was always on a computer but never MY computer. When I worked in an office, a spreadsheet was perfect as I was on the same computer all day. Twitter and Instragram are perfect when you’re on the go, but now they feel like overkill being home. When I’m with the kids, I’m home. When I’m working, I’m home. It’s super easy for me to have a paper and pencil on the counter ready to jot something down and pre-plan in the morning. Speaking of…Makes daily pre-planning easy. When I initially changed my diet and lost 70lbs I would take 5 minutes every morning to plan dinner, make my lunch and jot everything down all while eating breakfast. I found comfort in knowing what I would be eating later in the day. It took the guess work out of it and made it easy to stick to my own daily plan. You may notice dinner listed at the top above. Pre-planning daily has always worked for me. I want the accountability but not stress. If you haven’t noticed, I share a LOT online, and for a long time I posted food journals. More recently I’ve been using instagram, but publicly posting adds more pressure for me. Self-imposed but still very real. I know food journaling works, I like to do it, but I don’t want to worry about snapping the perfect photo or making a bowl of cereal look pretty. I still plan on snapping food photos because I’m a geek, but it won’t be my main form of journaling.I want to reach my goal and I KNOW this works. I know losing “the last 5 lbs” isn’t my most popular goal but that doesn’t change the fact I want to reach it. I refuse to do anything drastic or unhealthy to get there. My philosophy hasn’t changed since the day I started this blog: If I’m going to lose weight I have to do it on my terms, eating things I want to eat, exercising the way I want to exercise and enjoying every step of the journey. Food journaling was a huge part of my success. It’s a simple way for me to be accountable and, well, I know it works.What’s your thoughts on the food journal? Do you keep one? How?
