How Keep a Food Journal
When it comes to assessing the quality of your diet, the first step is knowing what you actually eat on a regular basis, because let's be frank, knowing how to eat healthy and actually eating healthily are two different things!
A food diary is a great start to figuring out what your current nutrition status is, and what steps and changes you need to make in order to get to that better place. They key to a food diary is detail. It can be a bit of a pest to track what you are eating, but if you can knuckle down fr at least 3 days (1 weekend day and 2 weeks days- but more would be better!!), you can work with a dietitian to see what you are doing well, and what habits may have slipped in that may not be serving you well.
Details on what brand, what weight or measurement you used and when you had it all help towards assessing nutritional adequacy. Plus, when it comes to someone crunching the numbers on calories, carbs/fats and protein, it takes away a lot of guess work and inaccuracy if you have estimated weight or measures.
There is a big difference between a. chocolate, b. block of chocolate and c. whole family block of chocolate. And while we are on the topic of just how much, honesty is always the best policy, you are really only cheating yourself by not writing stuff down because you don't want someone else to see it. Us dieticians have seen it all, and it would take something pretty outrageous to shock me on a food diary, and even then, I am here to help, not judge, so even if you did go on a food bender and ate a whole pizza, garlic bread, 2 bottles of wine a bag of chips and finished of your kids Happy Meal, that's just where we are starting from!
So down load the food diary template below, and get cracking on your food journey!