Food Logging

If you’d like to raise your awareness about what you’re actually eating and how it affects you, food logging is a simple and effective way to do this. Six weeks ago I decided to start keeping a log of everything I ate in a small notebook. I also keep track of calories. I wanted to raise my awareness of what I was eating and how calorically dense each meal was. Computing the calories is easy. I use a small kitchen scale to weigh quantities of foods, and then I just ask a nearby smart device what the calories are. Usually Google or Alexa can give the correct response to a question like, “How many calories are in 200g of strawberries?” And if not then I can just look it up online. Once I’ve already figured out the calories for a given meal, I don’t have to recalculate it, so this gets easier over time. I know that some people use apps for this purpose. I prefer to use the small notebook and a pen. I also don’t worry about perfection, so sometimes I just guesstimate calories, especially for water-rich veggies which don’t have many calories anyway. If I’m off by +/- 50 calories at the end of the day, that isn’t a big deal. I want to keep the tracking simple. In the six weeks that I’ve been logging, I lost 8.2 pounds without really trying, so about 1.4 pounds per week. I felt no deprivation, didn’t skip meals, and always ate when I was hungry. I could tell that I was eating less food and makin...
Source: Steve Pavlina's Personal Development Blog - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Health Source Type: blogs