Welcome to the Simple Steps to Improved Health Challenge Day 8 Track Your Food
Reminder to choose 1 of the first two actions to work on this week starting today or whatever day you want the week to start on for you. See Day 1 for more information about the challenge.
How Does Tracking Your Food Improve Health
There are many health benefits to tracking your food. The first is that you become aware of what you are eating. When you have the foods you’re eating listed then you can determine things like if you are eating enough or too much.
You can determine if you are eating the right types of foods to fuel your body, are you eating often enough or too often, and do you have patterns for times that you eat meals and snacks.
Additionally, if you also include what you are thinking or feeling when you eat, then you can find patterns for emotional eating or snacking without hunger such as when you are bored or because it is a habit in front of the tv at night.
Accountability and Integrity
Tracking food also creates accountability and integrity with yourself. If you want and plan to eat a certain way, then a tracker gives you the information on how well you are meeting that goal.
Remember this is not the time to beat yourself up but a time to decide if you like what you are eating for your body. If you don’t like it then you can change one small step at a time.
Physical Benefits
If you also track how you feel physically after eating then you might be able to determine intolerances or foods that are causing you inflammation. For example, you drink milk and 30 minutes later you have bloating or cramping or a runny nose. Then maybe you have some intolerance to dairy. Then you can experiment with having dairy in baked goods or having cheese or yogurt and write down if you have the same physical impact.
When you have the same physical impact over again with the same food then you can discuss with your medical provider other steps you can take with that food.
Another benefit is that it can help you lose weight. There was a study done with over 1000 people that showed the people that tracked their food daily lost twice as much weight in a 6 month period of time than people who did not track their food.
How to Take Action to Track Your Food
You may say I don’t have time for this but you can make it very simple. There are tracking apps like MyFitnessPal or LoseIt or SimpleFoodTracker. Just do a search in your app store for “food tracker” or “food tracker free” and a large list will pop up. Then you choose the one you would like to try.
Another simple thing is a spiral notebook or even a nice journal. Write the day at the top and the time, the food you ate with how much you ate, and any thoughts, feelings, or physical result throughout the day.
Again this is just for 7 days which also makes it simple. Even 7 days can provide you with a lot of data. It is good to do 7 days so you can see differences in your eating habits over a weekend along with what you typically eat during the week.
Go Do it
The most important thing to remember is that this is just information. Use this data to help you decide if you would like to make changes to what, how much, when, or why you are eating.
Whether you track for one day or all seven congratulate yourself for doing the tracking. You are awesome. There are many people who never take the opportunity to learn about themselves so they can decide on the next small steps to benefit their health.
Next look at the information you tracked. Are there any patterns for when you eat? How about why you eat? Are you always hungry or are you often mad or sad when you eat?
What about how much you eat? Are you always stuffed full or just satisfied and no longer hungry? What are you eating? Are you eating foods that fuel your body or eating a lot of processed foods?
Then you decide what is one small thing that you can do to improve your health. Maybe it is adding in one whole fruit a couple of times a week. It could be having one less teaspoon of sugar in your coffee. Maybe replacing potato chips with a vegetable one day a week.
That is how you step into improved health one small healthy habit at a time. You’ve got this.
