Food Journal

We've all heard about it.
We've heard that the ones that succeed do it.
I've tried. and tried. and tried.
I've quit. Forgotten. Fibbed. Skipped.

Writing it down. Food journalling. Tracking what you eat.

Its not anywhere easy. I've tried countless times to do it.
Writing it down on paper.
Writing it on the fridge.
Typing up an list.
Blogging it.
I have not ever succeeded at it for 4 days straight. Not ever.

Why? Because I forget. Most often that's the case. Because what I eat isn't easy to record. Really a big problem since most foods we eat at meal time are all recipes made up in my head that are vegan & gluten free. Those aren't in those fancy computer programs.

But those are excuses.

I have decided to put honest dedication into writing it down. I've installed an app on my phone for journalling. My Fitness Pal  I've tried several different ones and this is the one I like. Its got a barcode scanner so that I can just scan my package of veggie dogs and it will bring up the info for it. It was exciting when I scanned my jar of pickles and voila... it was there.

I started on November 30th.(That means I have 3 days in... tomorrow will be a record)

Keeping it honestly. Recording every cup of coffee, the baby carrots and the fudge that I sampled while I was making it for my husband. Its been tricky. But, I know that it will help. I also really hope it will get easier the more I do it.

Why does it help? It helps because it makes you stop and think... do I really want to write this down? Maybe I won't bother eating it after all. Its accountability. It helps because you can look back over your day or week and see exactly where your trouble areas lie... late night snacks bigger than you thought? Your daily cup of java is adding up because its more like 5 cups a day with all the added cream&sugar? Not eating enough at the first part of the day so binging at supper because you are so hungry? Going for mayo every day? It helps you look at your days and see where you can make SMALL changes... cutting a serving in half of a sweet. Skipping the mayo. Getting a smaller second helping.

I am determined. It is going to be difficult. MyFitnessPal also has a great feature that will calculate the number of calories in my entire recipe and in each serving just by adding all the info. This will be very handy for me because I could not find a listing for gluten free vegan spring rolls made with rice paper & tvp in ANY database, but that was what I had for supper on Tuesday last week (very yummy, will write the recipe down and post in my recipe blog).

There are lots of programs out there for tracking your food. Most phones can download free apps for it. You can do the notebook and pencil version. Or you can check out some of the others online. But either way, all the success stories show that writing it down is a huge factor in their success story.

I WILL SUCCEED

Here is a list of online calorie trackers. Some really awesome ones to check out:

http://www.my-calorie-counter.com/
http://www.livestrong.com/thedailyplate/
 http://www.myfitnesspal.com/
 http://www.fitday.com/
 http://www.mycalorietracker.com/
 http://caloriecount.about.com/
 http://www.sparkpeople.com/