So why is keeping a food journal or calorie tracking so important? Because keeping a record of what you consume will tell you a lot about where your specific issue lie. Your calorie consumption might be fine and you need to increase your exercise, or you may find you need to cut back your daily calories with, or with out exercise.
Calorie tracking is a great way to monitor what you are putting in your body on a daily basis. Consider creating a food journal as well, in place of just tracking calories. Track what time you ate each item, how hungry you were at the time, how did you feel when you were eating each item, and how long you felt satisfied from what you ate.
This can help you get an even more in depth look at your habits and can really help break emotional eating cycles. The more you are aware of, the more you can fine tune and make changes where they are needed.
Tracking and logging, admittedly, are time consuming but it is definitely worth the effort, and I promise you will learn something about your eating habits you didn't know before. Honestly, I had no idea how many calories I consumed in an average day, until I spent two weeks keeping track and wow is it an eye opener.
There are some really great tools on the internet for tracking calories, or creating a food journal or log. Some websites offer printable pages for keeping logs, and some websites have fully interactive online calorie trackers that allow you to enter your calories and track your progress all in one place.
Here's a few websites that offer calorie tracking:
My Calorie Counter by Everyday Health
Calorie Count
My Pyramid
There's many options available online and I highly recommend checking out a few sites and trying one out for a while and see what you learn.
One more really great site for calorie tracking is Calorie King, they have an impressive database of nutrition facts for all sorts of foods, whole foods and pre-packaged and restaurant foods. They do offer paid programs and services for weight loss, but the actual food database is free to use and is a great resource.
Showing posts with label Food Journal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Food Journal. Show all posts
Saturday, March 19, 2011
Sunday, March 13, 2011
Safeway's Online Features
I shop at Safeway. I like the products, the deals, and how closely it is located to my place. Another thing I like about Safeway is their online shopping tools. Now I know most places let you shop online, but that's not the cool part. Safeway, (and possibly others, I have yet to check) have a little button next to the items you are shopping for that says more information.
Can you guess what some of that info is? That's right the nutritional facts! This tool is great for when you are creating menus or just curious about the ingredients and nutrition facts.
This tool is also very helpful for me, because it helps me find and input my calories quickly. This makes calorie counting just a little bit simpler. It also saves the amount of time you stand in the aisle at the store looking at labels, time you could be using to work out or just enjoy yourself.
There are some items that will not have the nutritional information available such as items from the bakery or hot deli counter. I try to avoid a lot of these items simply because I have no idea what I am putting in my body at that point. Try and find a comparable treat with the nutrition facts on the package if this happens to you, and tell yourself those cherry turnovers probably have like 600 calories!
Can you guess what some of that info is? That's right the nutritional facts! This tool is great for when you are creating menus or just curious about the ingredients and nutrition facts.
This tool is also very helpful for me, because it helps me find and input my calories quickly. This makes calorie counting just a little bit simpler. It also saves the amount of time you stand in the aisle at the store looking at labels, time you could be using to work out or just enjoy yourself.
There are some items that will not have the nutritional information available such as items from the bakery or hot deli counter. I try to avoid a lot of these items simply because I have no idea what I am putting in my body at that point. Try and find a comparable treat with the nutrition facts on the package if this happens to you, and tell yourself those cherry turnovers probably have like 600 calories!
Monday, January 31, 2011
Emotional Eating
Emotions can really have an effect on the human body. It is said that 75% of over eating in Americans is caused by emotional eating. One common misconception though is that all emotional eating is caused my bad emotions and this simply isn't true. How many of you eat birthday cake?
The important thing is to try and think about how you are feeling when you reach for the fridge handle. I try and ask myself am I really hungry? When did I eat last? This has stopped me from over eating on numerous occasions.
There's several things you can do to try and avoid emotional eating:
1. Food Journal. I know I have mentioned this before, but even if you only keep track for a week or two this can tell you a lot. Try writing down how you felt before you ate, what you ate, and how hungry you were.
2. Think before you eat, ask yourself those questions. Am I hungry or just bored, sad, depressed, or even happy.
3. Find healthy outlets for your emotions. Make a list of things you could do instead of eat, and next time you think you are hungry try one of the things on your list. If you are still hungry afterwards, have a small snack.
4. Find a support group or therapy. No one likes to admit when they think they have a problem but there wouldn't be support groups out there if they weren't needed. Overeaters Anonymous has local chapters around the country.
5. Remove temptation. Try and stock your pantry or kitchen with healthy choices so that when you do find yourself eating it's something healthier.
6. Don't deprive yourself. Allow yourself that treat after dinner or whenever, but try and find a healthier version or just have a smaller portion.
7. Don't diet. Make changes to your everyday life. Don't think of this as something you can stop doing once you get down to the size you want. This is a life long commitment.
Remember emotional eating is something everyone struggles with. Trying to lose weight can be hard and if you get depressed every time you eat a brownie, you are just going to turn around and eat more. Pat yourself on the back for the little things you do accomplish every day and try and let go of the crap so to speak.
The important thing is to try and think about how you are feeling when you reach for the fridge handle. I try and ask myself am I really hungry? When did I eat last? This has stopped me from over eating on numerous occasions.
There's several things you can do to try and avoid emotional eating:
1. Food Journal. I know I have mentioned this before, but even if you only keep track for a week or two this can tell you a lot. Try writing down how you felt before you ate, what you ate, and how hungry you were.
2. Think before you eat, ask yourself those questions. Am I hungry or just bored, sad, depressed, or even happy.
3. Find healthy outlets for your emotions. Make a list of things you could do instead of eat, and next time you think you are hungry try one of the things on your list. If you are still hungry afterwards, have a small snack.
4. Find a support group or therapy. No one likes to admit when they think they have a problem but there wouldn't be support groups out there if they weren't needed. Overeaters Anonymous has local chapters around the country.
5. Remove temptation. Try and stock your pantry or kitchen with healthy choices so that when you do find yourself eating it's something healthier.
6. Don't deprive yourself. Allow yourself that treat after dinner or whenever, but try and find a healthier version or just have a smaller portion.
7. Don't diet. Make changes to your everyday life. Don't think of this as something you can stop doing once you get down to the size you want. This is a life long commitment.
Remember emotional eating is something everyone struggles with. Trying to lose weight can be hard and if you get depressed every time you eat a brownie, you are just going to turn around and eat more. Pat yourself on the back for the little things you do accomplish every day and try and let go of the crap so to speak.
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
The Right Tools
When I talked to my doctor about my weight, I asked her "What do you suggest for weight loss?" I realized this was a question I had never asked a doctor. What my doctor said was no surprise, "Eat a healthy diet and exercise at least 30 minutes a day, 3 times a week." The same old thing we've been hearing all along right?
Then she kept going! She suggested I keep a food journal, utilize calorie counters, support programs, and try and get more exercise in everyday life if I can't afford a gym membership. She also pointed me in the direction of the MyPyramid which is the governments website on "Steps towards a healthier you."
So, here I was, for years throwing my hands up in the air, thinking I don't know how to lose weight. Well guess what? There's tools for that. The right tools for the right job. A carpenter needs a hammer, and I need a calorie counter! I checked out several different websites googling the phrase calorie counter and found that there's several to choose from.
My favorite is My Calorie Counter by Everyday Health, it has so many different features, tools, and calculators for tracking all kinds of things, not just your calories! My Calorie Counters' food journal lets you start off by entering your weight and height, from there you can set your target weight goal, and the date you'd like to complete it in. You can track these and your measurements in a nice graph as you go along.
Inputting your caloric intake for the day is very easy. Select which meal (breakfast, lunch, dinner, snack etc.) and click the add food button. You'll be prompted to search foods, select recently added foods, search favorites, or create you own custom foods where you can enter the data from the nutritional facts yourself.
The food journal tallies all calories you enter into a field in the bottom of the page, and tells you when you are over or under in calories, fat, carbs, sodium, cholesterol and more. It will also deduct any calories burned for the day that you enter in to the exercise log at the bottom of the page.
My Calorie Counter offers many more features than the food journal. In addition to their community peer support system, they also offer you a place to blog about your progress, share photos or comments with others if you choose. They also offer calorie management tips, recipes, a meal planner, shopping list generator, BMR and BMI calculators and even a glucose trackers for those who are diabetic.
Now I will admit that I don't use my calorie tracker daily. I set my daily limits to 1500-1800 calories a day and started entering foods for the first week with out making any changes to my diet. This was a very BIG eye opener, and honestly this was game changer for me. I learned a lot about what and how much I eat. Now I keep these guidelines I set for myself in mind when I read labels. I keep a mental tally of how many calories I eat. Once a week though I will generally log in, track my calories for the day and see how I'm doing.
Another great website I found was Calorie King, they offer a vast database of nutritional information on tons of different foods. I have bookmarked their website so I can easily look up foods easily.
Well I hope these tools can help someone else out there. Counting calories is not fun and can be a little time consuming, but I guarantee it will provide you with important information about your diet.
Then she kept going! She suggested I keep a food journal, utilize calorie counters, support programs, and try and get more exercise in everyday life if I can't afford a gym membership. She also pointed me in the direction of the MyPyramid which is the governments website on "Steps towards a healthier you."
So, here I was, for years throwing my hands up in the air, thinking I don't know how to lose weight. Well guess what? There's tools for that. The right tools for the right job. A carpenter needs a hammer, and I need a calorie counter! I checked out several different websites googling the phrase calorie counter and found that there's several to choose from.
My favorite is My Calorie Counter by Everyday Health, it has so many different features, tools, and calculators for tracking all kinds of things, not just your calories! My Calorie Counters' food journal lets you start off by entering your weight and height, from there you can set your target weight goal, and the date you'd like to complete it in. You can track these and your measurements in a nice graph as you go along.
Inputting your caloric intake for the day is very easy. Select which meal (breakfast, lunch, dinner, snack etc.) and click the add food button. You'll be prompted to search foods, select recently added foods, search favorites, or create you own custom foods where you can enter the data from the nutritional facts yourself.
The food journal tallies all calories you enter into a field in the bottom of the page, and tells you when you are over or under in calories, fat, carbs, sodium, cholesterol and more. It will also deduct any calories burned for the day that you enter in to the exercise log at the bottom of the page.
My Calorie Counter offers many more features than the food journal. In addition to their community peer support system, they also offer you a place to blog about your progress, share photos or comments with others if you choose. They also offer calorie management tips, recipes, a meal planner, shopping list generator, BMR and BMI calculators and even a glucose trackers for those who are diabetic.Now I will admit that I don't use my calorie tracker daily. I set my daily limits to 1500-1800 calories a day and started entering foods for the first week with out making any changes to my diet. This was a very BIG eye opener, and honestly this was game changer for me. I learned a lot about what and how much I eat. Now I keep these guidelines I set for myself in mind when I read labels. I keep a mental tally of how many calories I eat. Once a week though I will generally log in, track my calories for the day and see how I'm doing.
Another great website I found was Calorie King, they offer a vast database of nutritional information on tons of different foods. I have bookmarked their website so I can easily look up foods easily.
Well I hope these tools can help someone else out there. Counting calories is not fun and can be a little time consuming, but I guarantee it will provide you with important information about your diet.
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