Welcome to Journal on it, the podcast where we slow down, tune in and turn the page on the story we tell ourselves. I’m Shannon. And each week we explore the powerful practice of journaling and self-reflection to help you reconnect with your thoughts, your purpose, and your inner voice. Whether you’re new to journaling or you’ve got stacks of filled notebooks, this space is for anyone ready to grow, heal, and get honest one page at a time.
Let’s dig deep, write freely and reflect boldly.
Episode four food journals. What is a food journal?
It is a place, be it app or document or notebook in which you track your food consumption, to get to a new goal or step towards figuring something out. There are a lot of reasons that people may choose to food journal, but what I’ve decided today is to focus on two of the more common reasons people choose this.
The first being figuring out if you have a food sensitivity or food allergy, and the second one being weight management and/or your relationship with food. For the majority of food journals, even outside of the two that I plan on focusing on, you should have the following in your documentation. What you’re eating. How much of it you are eating. What times you’re eating. Where you’re eating. Why you’re eating. If you’re with somebody who you’re with. Any symptoms you have after you are eating.
The reason you track the basics.
Now, there’s a bunch of reasons, but here are some of the more basic reasons why you’re keeping track of these. Obviously, if you’re food journaling, you need to know what you’re eating. The reason you wanna know how much you’re eating is this helps you analyze if you are overeating, undereating, or stress eating.
When you eat is important because this tells you if you’re spreading your meals out. If you’re actually getting enough meals. Or if you are eating specifically around like a certain event in your day. Where you’re eating and why can be important, are you at home on your couch. Are you eating at your dining room table, are you eating fast food on the road to work? Are you me, eating at your desk, in between filling out forms and checking things over? There’s a lot of places you could eat. Okay. And all of these have interactions with the way you view food.
Who you’re with can be a big one because some people will encourage you to eat healthier. Some will encourage you to eat less healthy. Some may encourage you to intentionally overeat or undereat, all of these are things you want to write down and analyze and see if there’s a pattern
For the health part of this, if you’re having symptoms after you eat, you wanna write those down so you can go back to whichever professional you’re seeing and go over all of this with them. So you have sort of a frame of reference for figuring out what is going on with your body and your stomach and your digestive track.
The Pros.
Now, there are some pros to this journal style. It can help you figure out your weight management. It can identify food triggers, things that bring up good and bad memories and good and bad reactions.
Food journaling can also help you see a good habit or a bad habit when it comes to food and it can also help you course correct when that happens. It can help you be mindful of when you’re actually hungry when you’re boredom eating. It can help you understand your hunger and fullness cues, and it can also help you track what nutrients you’re getting in your body. And it can help you ID foods being used as coping mechanisms. It can also help you identify what food is causing you to have an issue. Um, we’ll kind of go over that in the personal part of this. I have experience there and it can be very helpful. I just find you have to be very careful.
The Cons.
There are several cons to food journaling and. This can also be where it impacts mental health. So keep that in mind. This style of journal can be exceptionally stressful, especially if you are somebody who struggles with food. Um, it can cause a lot of feelings of guilt or shame. It can cause you to change your food choices.
If you are somebody who has a disordered relationship with food, it can make that worse. It can help, but it can also make it worse. Food journaling does also make it very difficult to go out to eat, and that’s because you never know exactly what’s in it. There’s a lot of fear of like being judged when you are out to eat and you bust out a little notebook to write down what you’re eating.
It can also be hard to start this, because if you don’t know where to start or how to start. It can be exceptionally overwhelming. There’s a lot of information out there and it can be really difficult to filter through, and that can be a big barrier to entry when it comes to the style of journal.
Personal Experience.
For me personally, I did a food journal probably about eight, maybe 10 years ago. I had noticed I was having a lot of stomach issues when I was eating and after I was eating. And I couldn’t figure out what was going on, and like everybody does, they run to their doctor when there’s an issue and my doctor had no idea what was happening. ’cause they were like, this is just a jumble mess of symptoms.
Thankfully they suggested doing a food journal and for me this was really difficult because I didn’t know what I was doing. When I first started. I was just like a pizza. Had a hamburger. I had three cups of Starbucks while I was in class today. I had no idea what I was supposed to be journaling or what I was supposed to be tracking or any of that information.
Figuring it out.
And it of course, led me where we all go to – the internet and down rabbit hole after rabbit hole of figuring out what I was doing, why I was doing it. And probably after a couple of weeks of test runs of different things I kept in the journal. I did finally find a method that worked for me. What I would do is after I had finished eating, I would write down an in-depth like block description of what I’d eaten. I would also write down like when I ate and if it was food I made myself. Or if I had it pre-prepared from like a grocery store or if I’d gone out.
And then because I was having stomach issues, I would leave a second part of the page and I would leave that for any symptoms I would feel later in the day. After I think maybe like four or five months, when I returned to the doctor, we were actually able to figure out what was going on.
And it turns out your girl is lactose intolerant. So the fact I lived off of cream cheese bagels for like four months. Was in fact the issue.
How I have changed what I do.
Currently, anytime I notice I am either feeling issues with my stomach or I find that I don’t feel as healthy as I want to, I do food journal. I just do it a little differently now that I’m not in as bad of a position as I was.
Um, I currently use an app called MyFitnessPal, breaks down a little bit of information about what you’re eating. It is a very manual process. There is a paid version of the app I haven’t tried, but it lets you take pictures of what you’re eating so you don’t have to do all of the steps. But that’s what I currently use and I use that to kind of break down if I’m getting enough protein in the day.Have I had too many carbs? ’cause I know for me, if I have too many carbs, I start to feel really sluggish.
A note for you.
Now your reasons for wanting to track your food or wanting to figure out. Your symptoms may be different than mine, and they may be different than everybody else’s out there. The goal is with food journaling truly and deeply to put yourself in a healthier body.
It’s not to punish yourself. It’s not to force you into a specific lifestyle or to make you change who you are at your core. The goal is for you to work a little bit each and every day with this and become a little bit healthier each and every day. And that isn’t a easy journey. It’s going to be a difficult one, especially if like me, you aren’t feeling great at the beginning.
When I first started food journaling, I was sick all the time and I had no idea what was causing it. And that’s difficult on a good day. But then add something new that you’ve never done, that invades your privacy, and you eventually have to share with somebody. It can be uncomfortable. It can be difficult to process and sometimes that difficultly start color the way you look at this.
So my suggestion is don’t give up. If you want to do this, try a few different methods. I’ll have a bunch of links down below, and of course there’s gonna be a transcript of this whole episode with links and resources. That are a little easier to click than they are here on Spotify. Find the method that works for you, and I hope that if you do decide to food journal you find a happier, healthier day in your future.
Outro
Thanks for joining me on journal on It where we slow down, tune in and turn the page together. If something resonated with you today, take poem with to journal it out and let the words lead you. You can find show notes, journal prompts, and more at the link in the episode description. Remember, growth happens one honest page at a time.
Until next time, keep writing, keep reflecting and keep showing up for yourself. I’m Shannon and I’ll meet you back here soon.
Music: https://pixabay.com/music/beats-whispering-vinyl-loops-lofi-beats-281193/
Resources: https://nourishwithclaire.com/pros-cons-food-journal-ie/
https://health.clevelandclinic.org/how-to-keep-a-food-journal
https://recipes.howstuffworks.com/food-journaling-101.htm
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4755274
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/how-to-keep-a-food-journal#tips
https://journalonit.com a Shareable link to the blog and any bonus content I make!