The Most Powerful Strategy To Help You Stick To Your Food Plan
If there’s one thing that many people struggle with on a day to day basis in terms of keeping their progress moving forward it’s sticking to their food plan. No matter how much time and energy you put into your food plan, there always seems to be something that will throw you for a loop.
So what can you do to help ensure that you stay with it? As you probably already realizing, maintaining a nutrition plan of some kind is the number one factor driving success when it comes to your health.
Whether your goal is to lower blood pressure, improve your fitness level, drop a few plans, decrease your cholesterol, or otherwise, food choices matter. And if you aren’t sticking to your food plan, you aren’t going to be positioning yourself for success.
So what can you do to help ensure you stay with it?
The number one tip I have for anyone who’s struggling with a food plan and wants to maintain it more easily is to start a food journal.
Let me show you why this works and what you need to be doing with yours if you are going to see success as well.
Why Food Journal?
So why food journal in the first place? A food journal is a little book where you can write down all of the foods you are eating throughout the day. You want to keep a clear account of what you ate and when so that you can refer back to it at a later point.
What good does all this do?
1. Keeps you accountable
The very first big benefit of a food journal is that it will help keep you accountable. Basically, if you know you have to write it down, you might be more likely to stick with the plan as laid out.
Think about this, you’ve been doing very well all week long and then you go out for dinner. Are you going to write down that you had a slice of cheesecake, potentially ruining your healthy streak, or are you going to think twice?
Most people will feel the heat when making food choices more when they have to write it down and as such, make better food choices because of this. So if keeping a food journal means you stick to your diet better, that is a definite win as far as your health is concerned.
2. Gives you a reference point to refer to
The next benefit a food journal brings is that it gives you a reference point to look back on. Let’s say your doctor warned you that your cholesterol was too high. So you’ve decided to make some changes to your diet plan.
You write down what you’re eating for the next month and then go test your levels again. If they’ve dropped, that’s great news and now you have a clear formula for success. If you are ever experiencing high levels again, you can look back at what you were eating when you did decrease them.
If it didn’t work, then you can evaluate what’s happening and make some changes. Then you also have a clear record of what didn’t work so you won’t waste time doing that approach in the future.
It’s easy to think that you’ll ‘just remember’ but considering many people can’t remember what they had for breakfast three days ago, this isn’t always the best strategy.
3. Helps with planning and organization
Finally, having a record of what you ate will also help with planning and organization. When you write down what you are going to eat or what you have eaten, you can use that same information to plan your future day’s menu.
If you’re someone who’s of the habit of calculating out your calories and macros, this is hard work, so if you are sure to write down what you ate and the macros involved, you can just repeat that day when you need those macros again.
What To Put In Your Food Journal?
So now that you know why you should use a food journal, what should you write in it? To have the most effective food journal, try including these items:
What you ate
When you ate it
How you felt when you ate it
How much you ate
Your hunger on a level of 0-10
How much energy you have
How much you slept the night before
Any other factors you feel may be relevant
If you track all of these, you can rest assured your food journal is one that will bring you help and success.