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When you hear the dreaded words “food tracking” you probably want to run and hide.
I get it. It feels daunting, scary, and like a whole lot of extra work added to your already busy life.
I felt the same way at 336 pounds. The thought of taking note of every single thing I put into my mouth made me feel dragon-sized butterflies in my tummy. I was terrified of what I’d discover. It made me feel like I would finally be forced to become accountable for my food choices.
Eventually I established habits that led to losing a whopping 160 pounds.
But how much was I eating?
A the time I was throwing anything and everything into my mouth.
I was also miserable; Like absolutely positively and horrifically miserable. Yet my eating felt completely out of control.
I knew I needed to make some changes, but I was afraid to try because I had already tried and failed a thousand times.
One morning I literally work up and thought to myself “Hmm. Maybe I’ll try this for today.”
I couldn’t think about losing all the pounds I needed to lose. I was overwhelmed with the thought of that. So instead of avoiding the weight monster completely, I decided to focus on just that one, single day.
I went about my life, eating the same things I normally would. Only now, I was checking labels and jotting everything down.
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The Good News
The first thing I noticed was that the foods I was eating weren’t actually all that packed with calories. Some of them were. Some of them were loaded with calories, fat, and carbs. But the problem was how much I was eating.
At first, the thought of eating smaller portions was annoying. But then I was relieved to realize that I could still eat the foods I wanted to eat. All I needed to do was be more mindful about how much of those foods I was consuming in one sitting.
I got to the end of the day and was actually a little surprised to find that it wasn’t that hard to keep track of my food throughout the day. And this is coming from a girl who was used to eating alllllll the unhealthy foods.
So for me to discover this new revelation was amazing.
Why You Should Try Tracking Your Food
The ultimate goal is to learn to listen so intently to your body that you are able to fuel it accordingly.
But sometimes it takes years or even decades to finally get to the point of mastering mindful eating.
Most of us don’t realize how much or how little we’re eating. We also don’t realize how much fat, or protein, or carbs are in our foods.
Ultimately, the foods we eat should have the right balance of those three things.
To find the right balance for your body, you’ll have to do some trial and error. Maybe chat with a nutritionist, or your primary doctor. But regardless, we all need some sort of variation of those three things.
Tracking our foods can help us to see exactly what amounts of these things we’re fueling our bodies with each day, so we can learn to tweak our eating habits in order to find what works best.
It’s not all about calories, believe it or not. Those matter, but they’re not the be-all-end-all.
Here are 5 Benefits of Food Tracking
Food tracking can help you to:
1. Set Parameters
Tracking your foods will help you to establish parameters in your eating patterns. It will show you correct portions of various foods, and will help you to determine if that third slice of pizza is actually worth it.
2. Overcome Emotional Eating
By tracking your foods, you become more aware at how much that entire pint of ice cream is affecting your health journey. You still might partake in some emotional eating here and there, but by tracking you’ll be able to find ways to tweak what and how much you eat when you’re on an emotional-eating rollercoaster. Over time you can change your goal, so you can be in pursuit of managing feelings without using food.
3. Become Aware Of What You’re Actually Consuming
When you start to track your food, you’ll probably be surprised at how much (or how little) you’re eating. Sometimes we think we’re eating more than we really are (don’t forget that sometimes under-eating stalls weight loss!). Or, we can think that the few crackers or chips we throw into our mouths throughout the day aren’t really adding up. But when we track those foods, we see that those things add up very quickly!
4. Reel In Out-Of-Control Eating
There are times when I want to eat everything! When I feel that way, it helps to track my foods so that I don’t overdo it. By tracking I can see clearly what I’m eating, so that I can level out my out-of-control habits that creep up at times.
5. Establish Eating Patterns
Will you need to track your foods forever? Probably not. Tracking gives you a great wealth of knowledge about foods. After a while you’ll be able to estimate the calories in your foods without thinking much of it.
How To Track Your Food
There are many ways to track your foods. One of the best ways to start is to use a free app on your phone. One of my favorites is MyFitnessPal. Using this app you can establish your own goals, adjust your calorie and macro goals, and record the calories you burn through exercise. You can even scan the barcode on the packaging of your foods and the app will automatically record it without much effort on your end!
Begin your efforts by focusing only on tracking the foods you would normally eat throughout the day, without making changes in your food choices. Once you do this, you’ll begin to see patterns in your eating, as well as how much (or how little) you’re eating each day. Once you get into a good flow of tracking, look back over the last few days and see what you can tweak.
Before you know it you’ll be rocking that weight loss journey!
