Gaining Deeper Insights from Food Journaling

I’ve been keeping my food journal for three weeks now. I haven’t restricted or changed my eating habits; I’ve just been tracking them.

Keeping a Daily Log

Initially, I jotted down all of the foods that I was eating and the time of day when they were consumed. This helped me to be mindful of the food choices I was making, knowing that it would be recorded later. However, it wasn’t very helpful in letting me see the overarching patterns of my food consumption.

Finding Patterns

In order to get a better picture of when and why I was eating what I was eating, I then entered all of my food log entries into a table so that I could see how what I was eating every day added up over time.

I tallied up the average times that I ate breakfast, lunch and dinner and what I usually ate for each of those meals. This helped me realize that my weak points, the times in the day when I’m most likely to succumb to my sweet tooth, are after dinner.

Creating New Habits

Given these observations, I’ve been trying to substitute fruits and other healthier options for a post-dinner dessert.

Without looking deeper at the patterns that emerge from food journaling, the exercise in itself would be pointless. But with these insights, I can create new, healthier patterns.