In this post I'm going to tell you about food diaries; how and why to keep one.
So, why should you keep a food diary?
There are a number of reasons as to why; firstly it's a great way of planning meals. I always plan what I'm going to eat a few days before hand just so I know what I'm going to buy and how much of it. This helps to stop wastage. It also helps me plan and factor in when I can indulge myself. For example, if I know I'm going out for dinner on a certain day I can make a rough estimation of what sort of meal I'll be having and the calories etc in it. To avoid overeating for the day, I can make sure I eat appropriate amounts of food and of certain nutritional value in the rest of the day and/or week. In addition, I know the days I exercise and can plan meals around that and my lifestyle. For example, I'll probably go for a low calorie/ low fat filling ready meal on a Tuesday night as I finish work with just enough time to get changed and go to my netball training session. By the time I've finished netball training, it's starting to get quite late and I'm usually very hungry. A ready meal takes a short while to cook and if its filling, I'll feel satisfied, meaning I don't snack on quite so much later before bed. Keeping a food diary helps you to analyse your eating habits if you are trying to achieve a certain goal. For example, you could be undereating, overeating, not eating enough of the "right" thing, not drinking enough fluids and eating certain things at certain times of the day or eating particular items due to emotions. It's all very useful though to log all this information. It also is great if you have noticed a change in your digestive system or a suspect allergy/intolerance. If you can link something to certain symptoms, you can take the information to your doctor who will suggest a useful course of action whether it be to discount it, eliminate it from your diet or send you for testing or to a nutrition/dietician. You should NEVER eliminate a food group off your own initiative, such as dairy products, fruit etc unless under strict medical supervision, control and monitoring
So How do I keep a food diary?
Anyone can keep a food diary. My advice is to use one online such as at www.myfitnesspal.com ; it is much easier for you to track your diary here as it provides the nutritional value and physically shows you if you are under eating/ overeating and a breakdown of the components of your diet such as fibre, carbohydrates, protein and minerals. It compares them for you against the recommended allowances and also can produce reports. It also allows you to track your energy expenditure against this.
However, if you go down the hard route, you may decide to keep a paper food diary. Here, you will have to base all your info on your own calculations of the products you are eating. This can be very time consuming and sometimes inaccurate. However, what you could do is write down in a paper diary what you are eating and the quantity and later upload/transfer this information on to an online diary. This is particularly useful if you are without an internet connection for a few days for example.
If you know your Daily Caloric Needs (see previous post) you can also use this to calculate how much exercise you need to do in order to "negate" or cancel your overeat as some days you will.
Other points to note:
It's ideal to track the amount of fluids you are taking on board... cups of tea and coffee etc all add up to sneaky calories when added with milk and sugars (a cup of tea or coffee with milk and 2 sugars is about 28 calories.... have 3 or 4 a day and that's a sneaky 100 ish calories!) It's the same for all those cheeky fizzy drinks and squash. Even keeping an eye on diet drinks is ideal as they can contribute to weight gain, bloating, fatty deposits etc. Not only that, but it may help with your eating habits analysis.
Reemember, it doesn't matter if you go over your daily caloric needs you can always burn off the extra and don't kid yourself by underestimating portion size and also everything you eat.
Hope you found this useful!
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