Food diary – What, why and how?

What is a food diary?

Easy things first.  A food diary is simply a log of what we eat and drink throughout the day.  If we eat or drink it, we make a note of it, so we can look back at it later and learn from our experience.

Why do a food diary?

“I know what I’m eating and drinking!  I’m there when I’m doing it!”

There are many reasons why you may want to keep a food diary.  But for me, the main ones include:

• Data collection – Before you can change something, you need to know what you are doing. This will act as your road map, guiding your way forwards.
• Memory aid – No matter what people think, it has been shown time and again that people are terrible at remembering what they eat and drink. And while you may think you are different than everyone else, it is still worth doing it, because I am certain you will be surprised.
• Seeing the big picture – Most people focus on a small detail they fixate on, and then miss the elephant in the room, or the obvious big issue. For example, stressing about if they should eat red or green peppers, while forgetting about the McDonald’s they have 5 times a week (this is a true story!) A clear food diary helps us see what is important, and what can be ignored.
• It changes what we eat/drink – Most people will find that without doing anything else, when they start keeping a food diary, they start to eat better. Why miss out on these easy wins?

How to do a food diary?

As always, there are a few way to keep a food diary. You choose the way that works best for you.

Pen and paper.

Keep your pen and notebook handy and whenever you eat/drink something, jot it down, using the following format:

Time/Meal	Food/Drink	Quantity	Emotions/Feelings
Breakfast	Bowl of cornflakes and milk	Half a bowl	Rushed off my feet!

Or you could copy this template by clicking here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/10tCDP8_aYhcMzBkri7i8bozVdkUQ7Sci/view

Spreadsheet

If you don’t like having bits of paper around that can get lost, you can do it on a spreadsheet on your computer if you like.  But again, I would do it in a similar format as the pen and paper way, above.

Phone App

There are plenty of phone apps out there that you can use as a food diary.  I’ve not got any personal experience with them myself (I’m old school), but I’ve heard a lot of people praise the one called My Fitness Pal.  Let me know if you have any other recommendations.

Photographs

Almost everyone now has a phone with a camera. Simply take a picture of everything you eat/drink. This is probably the quickest, easiest way, but you do sacrifice a bit of the detail you get with the other methods.

Extra Brownie points

You get extra Brownie points if you also do something with your completed food diary.

• Look back at what you have eaten over the last 7 days.
• Make a note of the biggest, most obvious ways you can improve.
• Plan how you can make those improvements in the following week.

Summary

• Do a food diary for a week.
• Look back at it and see the big patterns that emerge.
• Pick the biggest, easiest thing to change.
• Focus on improving that one, big, easy thing the following week.