About 2 years ago, I decided that it was time to take a hard look at my finance. I always worked with budget and had a vague idea of where the money was going but never had a crystal clear idea of exactly how much I would have in 5 to 10 years’ time for example, and my total super. With the help of ‘barefoot investor’ I found what works for me in terms of keeping the finance in check.
How does this relate to anything with nutrition? Well, it is kind of similar in that unless we take a closer look at what we eat day in and day out, we are just sort of going with the idea ‘Yes, I eat healthily! And forgetting about the after-dinner binge of junk or weekend of drink fest. As tedious as it sounds, there are so many benefits to keeping track of what we eat, when we eat (time of the day), the environment of where and how we eat.
The reasons are:
- We know if we’re consuming enough macros (carb, protein and fat) suitable for our body and the life stage we are in (if you are unsure about how much you should be eating book a consult with me to work it out). For example, growing teenagers require much more of those macros than sedentary adult.
- We get to know under which circumstances we tend to binge – cultivate awareness on what triggers our emotional eating (work stress, being with certain friends, eating out of boredom or certain foods triggering comfort from childhood, the list goes on)
- We get the honest overview of what we actually eat and not just imagine we eat pretty healthy every day, what we put on the paper becomes hard to ignore.
It is very helpful when clients come in with their food journals in hands as I can get a better understanding of what they eat every day. Some might eat healthily during the week but not so much on the weekend or they eat healthily at work but then binge at home etc. It gives me a great insight as to the best to approaches in achieving client's health goals.
The act of writing in itself can shed a light on mindful eating. We get to know when we sit down to eat at a table, we take more time to eat whereas when we’re in front of TV we don’t even know how much or what we’re eating.
There are number of apps these days to keep track of what we eat. But no need to get fancy, just keeping track of our meals on the piece of paper or on our phone is good enough.
I’d like to challenge you to keep a food journal starting just for the next 3 days. Write down your breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, how much and what you drink. It will give you insight to your eating patterns
and behaviours around food.
I can then give you advise as to how best to hit your macro (carb, protein and fat) and micros (vitamins and minerals) for the body to work at optimal level.
