31 Days of Food Journaling Challenge!

Good Tuesday ALL!

I have so many people that has asked me what has been the most beneficial things used to lose weight. Some will think the workouts or the Shakeology. Both of those have proved to be great tools and I don't think I would have lost 85lbs in about 8.5 months without them. You will be surprise to hear that what has helped me the most was writing/logging down my foods! Many of you may know that I use www.myfitnesspal.com to log my foods daily, but I have also used www.sparkpeople.com and other apps to log in my foods (all free sites). Since that was what I would call the main factor in me losing the weight, I wanted to create a 31 Day Food Journaling Challenge!

 

Why are you creating the Challenge?

I have found myself not logging in all of my foods or not logging in the "bad days". This is something that I did consistently at the beginning. It is really a challenge for myself, but why have all of the fun and gain all of the benefits. :-) Sharing is Caring!

Is there a difference between Food Logging and Food Journaling?

Yes, it is. With Food Logging, you are just logging in what you eat and totaling up the calories. With Food Journaling, it is logging your food with the total of calories and reflecting on how you felt while eating the foods, what made you eat the foods, did you skip any meals and etcetera. This is something that I need to work more on and will be part of the challenge.

What is the Challenge?

This is a very simple and very difficult challenge all at the same time. It is very important in weight loss especially if you are working out like crazy! You may not see the results you desire if you have no idea what you are consuming. This will be a 31 day challenge and will run from March 1- March 31st and can be as complex or as simple as you need it to be. This should not be a stressful process. It should only aid in becoming a healthier you and helping to shed those stubborn pounds.

Journaling Options:
Write down every meal, your mood, your energy, how long it took, how hungry you were, how you felt after. Be consistent in what you track. You can track how much or less that you desire. Minimum tracking every meal and daily reflection is required.

Take a picture of every meal (this has really been shown to help improve food choices) and jot down your thoughts

Buy a journal.

Use an online App such as myfitnesspal, lose it, or sparkpeople and take advantage of the note section of the daily log area.

Decide if you want to use a digital journal or pen/paper

Share your food journal if you think that will help you stay more accountable.

I have created an event on my Facebook fitness page if you want accountability and support: www.facebook.com/TheGirlyEngineerGettingFit

The direct link to the Event is: https://www.facebook.com/TheGirlyEngineerGettingFit?ref=hl#!/events/343211262462826/

As a mini challenge you must try 3 new fruits and/or vegetables for the 31 days!

If you are doing the Challenge Via Instagram, Tag your pictures to: #31DayFJChallenge
 
 
 
 
 

If you are trying to go even further with your journaling, here is more great advice from an excerpt from: http://www.healthfulpursuit.com/2011/11/food-journaling-challenge/

"Don’t be scared of the ‘bad days’

Please understand that there are no bad foods or bad days, and that these days are just as important to report as the good days.

Remember that guilty days where we feel like we’ve cheated our body are only bad patterns that come to the forefront when we’re journaling. It’s important that we record each and every thing, no matter how we feel about ourselves during/after we ate it. The whole reason behind food journaling is to begin to understand why we made these choices, so write it all down!

All the answers are right there

So you’ve recorded a week. Now what?

Set aside a couple of minutes per week to review your journal to understand:

· What you eat

· When you eat

· How much

· Where

· With whom

· Why

From there, you can begin to look at what you’ve eaten and start picking out patterns. Some things I look for:

· How many fruits, vegetables, proteins are you getting on a daily basis? Are there days where you had more of one type of food that you felt better than other days?

· Are you skipping meals and subsequently overeating later in the day?

· Are your meals balanced? Are you eating all of your starchy foods in the morning and packing in the protein in the afternoon?

· Is there a long span of time between meals?

· Do you notice any food groups that are completely missing?

· Do you notice you overeat if you wait too long in between your meals?

· What is the perfect amount of time between each of your meals? What is too long, what is too short?

· Do you get a particular symptom after eating a certain type of food?

· What is the ideal day for you? What patterns were you following that day? Why did you feel so good?

· Is there a meal that you may have too often?

· When you consider the day as a whole, is most of what’s being consumed whole, unprocessed food or is it primarily packaged?

Translating the answers into solutions

Now you know all of these neat things about yourself. How does that help you exactly?

I usually add a blank page to my journal and write down all of the things I learned in the previous week. Then I write a list of the things I’ll work on for the following week. For instance, here’s the list of things I’m currently working on:

· Remember to take my B complex daily. It really helps with brain fuzziness.

· Try to have at least 1 vegetable protein per day, preferably in the morning.

· Increase protein during my morning snack, maybe with stevia sweetened coconut flour muffins?

I refer back to this list on a daily basis to make sure that I’m setting some of the learnings into action!"

Try Food Journaling out and I am sure you will see huge changes! Let's do THIS!!! March will be awesome!
 

 The Girly Engineer