Marie Rodriguez

Marie is a professional, over-the-road driver

Eating write – keeping a food journal

When people find out I’m a writer, they’re often surprised to discover I don’t blog or keep journals, and I didn’t keep a diary as a girl.
     I write when a story pops into my mind. Though many of my writer friends enjoy writing their reflections and thoughts in journals, diaries and blogs…I don’t.
     Though I’ve heard of the benefits of keeping a food journal, I always balked at the idea. To me, it all sounded too much like being committed to daily writing “Dear Diary, today I ate a bowl of Wheaties, one non-fat yogurt cup, a chicken sandwich and an apple, etc.”
     I was sure I knew how much I was eating and snacking. I knew I’d been gaining control of my eating and I was seeing results. Why write it down? I’ll tell you why.
     Several weeks ago my son, who has been very supportive of my efforts to regain my good health, handed me a food Journal that he got from a personal trainer at the gym.
     This may sound like a neurosis, but I can’t resist filling in blank boxes. And I automatically began filling in the space for the date, then the space for meal one and meal two. Then I felt it my duty to find out the calories of the items and fill in those blanks.
     Keeping this food diary wasn’t hard to do. It is a thin spiral notebook, and I keep it with my logbook. Usually, stops and updates in my logbook correspond with times I eat, so for me it is a convenient place to keep it. When I go home, I just slide it into the side pocket of my tote bag.
     Finding the calories to food is easy. Most chain restaurants and fast food places now stock pamphlets with their foods’ calorie counts and they have them listed on their Web sites, too.
     Fortunately, my food register (notice that I’ve renamed the thing) actually validated that I was doing well. A couple of times during the past several weeks, I allowed myself to be a bit lackadaisical, however, because I was feeling so good about a job well done. When I tallied up the calories for those two days, my jaw nearly hit the floor at just how easily calorie counts can skyrocket.
               But because I was making myself accountable and I could see it on paper, it was easy to avoid falling into a negative pattern that would undo all my work. This entire experience has also helped me to learn even more about nutrition.
     While I cared about the health benefits of foods, such as if they had certain vitamins and minerals and in what way they were good for my body, if they were high in antioxidants, fat content, etc., I had never counted calories. Now I am learning more about that aspect of nutrition.
     When people ask me about how to live a healthy lifestyle, I don’t only tell them to watch what they eat. I also tell them to write what they eat.