Food Journaling – Why You Need It

Click HERE to calculate your daily calorie requirements.

We think we’ll remember from one day to the next what we ate. And we generally do for major meals.  But food journaling is the only precise way to track your calorie intake.

A cookie here and a piece of candy there gets lost in the shuffle. Those empty calories add up quickly and can prevent you from reaching your weight loss goals.  I’m most successful with weight loss when I use a food journal to track my calorie and macronutrient intake.

When I first started journaling my food, I used a manual tracker record my meals. Several years ago, I started using MyFitnessPal for the ease and convenience.  

I don’t always track my food and calorie intake. Unfortunately, those are the times I start to gain weight.  While you think you’ll keep it all in your head, history and research have shown food journaling is a far superior method of calorie counting, particularly for weight loss. (click HERE to calculate your daily calorie requirements.)

My Fitness Pal Benefits:

• There are tons of foods and brands already in the My Fitness Pal database, including the calorie and macronutrient breakdown (grams of protein, carbs, etc.).

• Automatically calculates your daily calorie and macronutrient needs based on your height, weight, and fitness goals.  As you log your meals, it subtracts it from your daily total and shows how many calories you have left for the day.

• You can track your water intake.

• It estimates calories burned from cardio exercise and incorporates it into your daily calorie allowance.  It doesn’t do the same for weight training, so you’ll have to estimate calories burned from weight training on your own.

• It’s online so you can access it any where, even from your phone.

• You can log in with Facebook so no need to remember another password.

• You can share your food journal with your fitness coach for accountability.

4 Reasons You Need a Food Journal

1. I don’t even have to say this one, but I will.  Practically all of us underestimate the number of calories we eat a day.  It’s subconscious. You want to believe you’re making the right food choices.  Truth is, you don’t know unless you track it.

2. We inevitably will forget that cookie or piece of chocolate we ate yesterday and the day before that, and the day before that.  Those “little” calories add up.  You need to know how much (or how little) it’s impacting your goals.

3. Ignorance is not bliss.

4. If you’ve hit a plateau or haven’t met your goals, you can take a hard (and accurate) look at your eating habits and make the appropriate adjustments to get back on track.

Have a cool “must-have” fitness tech tool you love?  Leave a comment below and let us know!  Someone else may be able to benefit from it too.

Get fit & fabulous!

XOXO, Coach MaShelle