Nowadays, people refer to various books on self-development, and how to keep all your affairs in an appropriate order. Life has become quite dynamic, and we start paying more, and more attention to planning for a day, week, year, or decade! In parallel, it is rather vital to relate to your life as to research.
We find cool, and creative ideas, we try remembering them, and we struggle to realize them. As the Americans state: “Better having a dinged-up piece of paper than a sharp memory.” This saying outlines the importance of writing plans, and ideas in your notebook. At the same time, it is very important to keep yourself healthy, energetic, and well-organized.
So, if we adjoin these two features of a modern individual, we will get a so-called food diary. Sounds a bit unfamiliar, right? However, it is one of the modern know-hows within the context of healthy life. So, what is this type of self-development, and what benefits does it offer to those who want to change their lives from a “nutritious” perspective?
What is Food Diary?
It is a separate notebook or a digital spreadsheet (as you wish, and how is convenient for the user), in which a person monitors their food habits, the number of courses, the number of calories, and nutrition, etc. per day. It doesn’t have a universally recognized structure and depends on the aims of its author.
Generally, it assists in counting up the sum of calories consumed, and certainly, seeing the whole image of your eating culture. For example, you eat an apple, then you search for its average number of calories per 100 grams, and you write down this fact. However, you may ask: “Eating food, and parallelly writing about that on a piece of paper? Isn’t that boring?” Well, it is up to your choice whether you want to eat consciously or not (but we are for the first one).
There are some creative people who create albums with photos of their portions. So, you can imagine how proud you can be if you compare your present normalized portions with those which were at the beginning of your path, or before it. Furthermore, the maintenance of a food diary can in the meantime become your habit, maybe even your hobby! You are the one who chooses the structure, design, and purposes. You are responsible for your individuality, according to the saying “We are what we eat.”
Speaking of self-organization, developing relations with others, and even sharing with them the idea of keeping a food diary, is a great step to becoming more successful.
To sum up, briefly, a food diary is a great thing that improves our ability to reasonable consumption. It is a piece of hard work that can give us answers to four fundamental questions about our eating pattern: what we eat, how we eat, why we eat, and when we eat. In addition, it helps us defeat our hated boresome, and start living a life, not with an auto-pilot!
Benefits of Food Diary
Now, as we have defined what is what, let’s talk about the profits you may gain if you find the idea of keeping this kind of diary awesome!
You can count your calories
Even small, but pretty tasty products, can contain lots of calories. For example, some diets allow the addition of cream to coffee. However, liquid and whipped creams are different in their number of calories. In particular, you can search for the table of products, and their calorie quantity to stay tuned.
In addition, calories are the energy we get to spend in the near future. So, if you have a lazy day, the food diary can help you cut your consumption temporarily!
You will know what you eat exactly
While you are on a diet, you may face the rough temptation of getting a sweet cheeseburger or buying coke. At the same time, imagine your feeling of pride when you get your diary, write about healthy salads you’ve eaten, and watch this masterpiece.
For sure, a food diary is like artwork, and you are an artist. And if you want to make it perfect, and harmonized, you won’t unite hamburgers with arugula salads.
You understand whether you eat out of hunger or boresome
When you work a lot or read a book, the feeling of having a bite appears suddenly. In case of the absence of a food diary, you would go to the cupboard with snacks, or to the fridge, and take something to eat. The keyword is “something”: it is not the reasonable consumption we mentioned before.
Instead, since you keep a food diary, you can observe your culture of eating. So, it is true to have three courses per day, with two noshes (not biscuits, but fruit).
