Journey Updates
Food Logging - Honestly and Integrally
January 26, 2010 @ 01:35 pm
Since starting this journey a few years ago I've heard tell of food-logging. Many swear by the importance of writing down what they eat. I ignored them. First off, there was no easy way to do that. I don't carry a notebook with me everywhere, which means I have to remember later what I ate. That turned out to be kind of hard (a problem in and of itself). What's worse, after writing down what I ate, I had to figure out what that meant in numerical terms. Calories. Weight Watchers Points. Whatever.I was on Weight Watchers for a while and found good success with it. I think it's a great program. I eventually unsubscribed because I just wasn't using it or being healthy at all. The fact is, I don't want to run to the computer every time I eat, log into a website, look up the points, record it, and stare at it. They didn't really have an iPhone application at the time I was actively using their program (now they do, and it's probably great). So part of the problem is that I have to find a convenient way to record what I'm eating, and the other part of the problem is finding the actual health quantities for what I'm eating (i.e. calories).
Right now, I'm focusing on eating healthy. I'm focusing on eating a good balance of nutrients - protein, carbohydrate, omega-3 and other healthy fats. I actually don't care about calories right now. I just want to eat right. I want to eat whole, natural foods. I'm cutting out as much processed stuff as I can. And that solves the second part of the problem - if I don't care about calories, I don't need to track them.
Enter Twitter, Stage Right.
The easiest way for me to track what I'm eating is Twitter. I have it handy on my computer, I have it handy on my iPhone, and my iPhone is always in my pocket. I created a new Twitter account - @LWDFoodLog - which I can easily post what I eat right when I eat it. I just whip out my phone, jot it down real quick, put phone away. Voila! Food logging!
For an extra-special level of accountability, I make my food log public. You can follow the Twitter account (though why you would want to, I don't know). I also have a little computer doodad that goes out and grabs that Twitter feed and publishes it right here on my site for all to see. And it's working.
I've been sticking with it for a couple of weeks, and I'm pretty happy with it. I'm happy with my progress. I'm happy to look back over the days and see that I've largely eaten well. Almost no High Fructose Corn Syrup, very little sugar - just healthy, natural, live foods rich in good stuffs. But there are mistakes too, there are times I binge, times I go a little crazy eating anything I can find. And that's the key to food logging - being 100% forthright with everything you eat.
I log everything that goes into my mouth that isn't water (well ...). Occasionally I screw up. I log those too. If I didn't log everything, there would be no integrity to the food log and I might as well log nothing. Because if I can't actually see what I'm eating, I'll never learn. If I don't honestly record what I eat, any doctor or nutritionist I enlist to help me down the road won't have all the facts. And practicing these levels of honesty and integrity with something so simple as food logging teach me to be honest with myself in every area of my health.