6 reasons to keep a food journal

With most of my clients trying to lose fat or gain muscle, I demand that they keep a food journal for the first few months. It’s essential to help you change your habits and reach your goals faster. Here are 6 reasons to keep a journal!

1. Accountability: A journal allows you to notice what you are doing wrong. It is a great way to discover unstable eating patterns such as fasting, binging, or excessive snacking. Many of my clients found that keeping track of their intake was helpful to stabilize their eating schedules and quantities.

2. Control: A journal will help you eat less during the weekends and holidays. It is easier to control your portions when you keep track of what you are putting in your body. It’s like using cash instead of a credit card for Christmas shopping; once you spend all your cash (or eat all your calories), you have to stop.

3. Drink less: Most of my clients decrease their intake of alcohol once they realize how fast the calories add up and how long they have to exercise to burn those calories off.

4. Awareness: A food journal makes you aware of what you put in your body. With the portion distortion in our generation, we don’t realize how much we are eating. By entering what you eat, a mobile application can easily give you the content of food. For apps recommendations, read Fitness apps to stay motivated.

5. Save money: Keeping a journal will make you want to eat out less often, thus saving you tons of money. You will quickly realize that when you go out your intake of saturated fat, sodium and calories will go up while your intake of fibre, protein, and vitamin will be lower.

6. Feedback: It will be a lot easier for your nutritionist to assess your intake of macronutrients (proteins, fat and carbohydrates), vitamins, and minerals. Your nutritionist will be able to give you more precise information as it pertains to your deficiencies and excesses and will be able to adjust your meal plan consequently. Furthermore, a food journal offers a clear picture of what your patterns are and your nutritionist can help you even more by taking those into consideration.

What’s your favorite nutrition app?

By: Alyssa Fontaine, P.Dt. Nutritionist

6 reasons to keep a food journal is a post from Nautilus Plus. The Nautilus Plus blog aims to help people in their journey to fitness through articles on training, nutrition, motivation, exercise and healthy recipes.
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