Health Benefits of Keeping a Food Journal

Food journaling may be time-consuming, but it's worth the extra effort it takes.

Tracking your meals and mood daily helps you stay focused on your goals and you're also more likely to spot behavior patterns and food sensitivities.

How Keeping a Food Journal Benefits Your Health.

A food journal is such a simple tool to use in your health journey. While it certainly serves as a place to keep track of what you eat daily, you'll benefit even further when you take it to the next level and include more details.

The ideal way to use a food journal.

In addition to the basics of what you're eating and drinking, it's ideal if you use your food journal to write how you're feeling physically, emotionally, and mentally as well.

Where you're eating and who you're eating with also helps, but a key factor is how you feel before and after you eat.

It might seem like a bit of extra work, but it only takes a few minutes each day, and the insights journaling provides is certainly worth the time commitment.

Here are some benefits you'll get if you keep up with a daily food journal.

You'll identify important patterns.

By logging what you eat in your food journal, you may solve the mystery of bothersome symptoms. For example, some days you feel bloated and others you don’t.

Don't rely on your brain to remember all the little things you've eaten the past few days or weeks, as you may miss something. Use your journal daily. Take time to be specific. List each item that goes in your mouth.

Review your journal each week, and you may soon spot a pattern after eating or drinking a particular item, leads to the symptom you’ve been bothered by.

Find the foods that cause your problem.

At this point you can try eliminating offending foods. Common ingredients that may cause problems are dairy, wheat, eggs, corn, and soy. Eliminating them for a week or, ideally several weeks may cause bloating or rashes to disappear. 

Food additives such as salt, MSG, flavorings, and colorings may also be triggers. It’s almost always a good idea to stick to whole foods with healthy seasonings from your pantry when trying to identify the source of your symptoms. 

You'll see how it affects your mental well-being.

The foods we eat can have a direct impact on our mental well-being. Where we eat and who we eat with can also cause different feelings. Scarfing down your lunch while ferociously answering emails in your office will feel a lot different than eating your healthy lunch outside at a picnic table.

We often see eating as a task we need to check off of our to-do list instead of approaching it as a way to truly take care of ourselves. Alternatively, we may use food to change our mental state or as comfort for emotional distress.

You'll see at a glance what makes you feel great.

Ever eat something and feel completely energized in every cell of your body?

If you notice that you feel this way every time you eat a grapefruit for breakfast, for example, you'll want to make a point of eating grapefruit more often.

Food journals help you keep track so you can laser in on eating foods that give you energy more often. Plus, you’ll discover what foods deplete your energy so you can focus on avoiding those.

Identify food sensitivities.

It can be hard to determine whether specific foods cause sensitivities. With known allergens, symptoms are clear and those foods must be avoided. Nuts are an example causing severe reactions if consumed.

But, if you experience gastrointestinal woes and can’t identify the cause, keeping an accurate journal and reviewing it periodically may reveal a sensitivity. For example, celiac disease is not very common but gluten sensitivity is far more prevalent.

Let's say you keep breaking out in a rash or are experiencing extreme bloating and discomfort. You cut out gluten and notice a big difference. Now, you have this information to share with your healthcare provider, to see what further investigation might be needed. You're one step in the right direction toward finding out what is truly causing your discomforts.

Note: Always consult with your healthcare provider when making food and lifestyle changes. There may be other, more serious causes of your symptoms that should be followed up on early for disease detection or to prevent disability or death.

Mindful eating.

Journaling your feelings about food, before and after you eat will help you see patterns. You’ll also see tendencies that prompt unconscious eating or self-judgment about food choices.

Eating mindfully means you take the time to enjoy your food, savoring the taste, temperature, and texture of each bite. Chew slowly and well - up to 32 times for each bite for digestive benefits. 

Mindfulness also includes avoiding eating when you’re distracted by technology or when in an emotional state or tense environment. Keeping a record of your feelings is an important part of food journaling.

Habit awareness.

Simply logging your meals and snacks on paper or using an app will cause you to pay more attention, automatically leading to habit change. Food journaling takes your awareness of your habits to a higher level.

Taking the time to journal, as recommended here, will help you take notice of your eating and lifestyle habits. It paints an accurate picture and allows you to realize some habits you may have that you weren’t aware of.

There are so many benefits to using a food journal, and I highly suggest giving it a try.