Does this sound familiar? You’ve been tracking everything you're eating for the past few days, you're weighing and measuring your meals and recording it all in your tracking app or your food log... and then you get invited out to dinner with friends. You decide to scratch your pre-planned dinner plans and go out with them. You have some pizza, wings, and a little bit of wine or beer…and you start thinking to yourself: Why change my food log? Since I clearly blew my meal plan for the day...why bother? Don’t feel guilty about it! So many people experience days very similar to this. Whether these occasions are birthdays, weddings, social events, board meetings, where food is ready supplied, it’s easy to succumb to the pressure. This experience is inevitable...the question then becomes: should you still track it? The answer is yes. Tracking allows you to see what these interruptions are in your meal plan and allows you to move consistently towards your goals. By tracking, you can identify trends and figure out a game plan on how to consistently overcome these trends. Here's some benefits of tracking your food: 1. Food Awareness: How much are you actually eating? What foods are you actually eating? How often are you eating? What are your portion sizes? All this information provides tools to figure out if you are really eating as healthy as you want, or if you are eating in sync with your goals. 2. Triggers: Tracking food also allows you to see what your triggers are. Does a certain time of the month make you crave sugar, chocolate, and ice cream? Do certain stressors make you make certain food choices? Do you binge snack when you're bored or watching TV or it's the weekend? Do you eat different than you eat when you have a regimented schedule? As you consistently track the “bad food” you will identify what are these foods that you're eating and how can it help you move towards your goals by making slight adjustments in your plan to accommodate and overcome these things. At CNU Fit, we believe in having a growth mindset, which means you're actually learning from your setbacks. You know, one day you may fall off your plan or “exceed your macros,” but it's an opportunity to learn from that experience, make modifications and continue to move forward. But without that data, we don't know how to help you. So this week, I recommend you get an app like My Fitness Pal, or open up a notebook, and just write down every single thing that you put in your mouth. And next week let's and see how you what you ate, and how it was aligned with your long term goals.
