Lean Strong Mom Strategy #4: Keep a Food Journal

A Place to Start

If you want a lean, strong body, especially when you’re a busy mom, you need to have an honest and accurate idea of how much food you are consuming each day. Then, as you implement a menu or eating plan for weight reduction, you will be able to see the difference in your eating habits and whether or not those changes are helping you reach your goals.

Budgeting Food

I found that tracking my daily food intake directly contributed to my weight loss success. As I tracked my food intake (as well as my exercise/calorie burning) I began to see that it was a lot like budgeting my money. They were very similar but instead of budgeting dollars, I was “budgeting” calories. Each time I ate a meal, I would “spend” from my total alloted calories for the day. I could also track how much fat, carbohydrates and protein I had eaten or “spent” from my total budgeted for those. When I was first starting out it was helpful to be able to check throughout the day how many calories (and the quality of those calories) I had left for dinner or dessert, etc.

How Does a Busy Mom Count Calories?

Now, I have a confession to make. I really hate to count calories! I remember doing this religiously when I was in late high school and even college, it took up a lot of my time and it always felt somewhat obsessive and restricting. However, today, as a busy mom, I have found some tools that have helped me to implement this necessary part of my weight loss strategy. My favorite food journal tool is a very inexpensive software program called Calorie King. It does all the counting for me! I just have to enter my food quantities and exercise for the day and it tells me if I am reaching my quality/quantity goals for the day. The only possible negative about it (depending on what you’re looking for) is that it does not generate food plans and recipes for you. It does, however, personalize everything else.

Outgrowing the Food Journal

What is great about tracking your food intake is that it does not take long to learn how much your body needs to maintain a certain healthy weight. As I lost weight and learned what my own healthy eating patterns needed to look like to stay thin, I didn’t need to journal as much because my daily habits were becoming just that – habits, healthy ones. In a way, I was a able to “take off” beyond the tools of a food journal and didn’t need the hand-holding as much. Of course, if ever I would start to gain a couple of pounds, I would immediately return to my food journal for a reality check.

What has been your experience with a food journal? Have you found it to be helpful or a hindrance? I have found that it is much harder to rationalize rotten food choices when I am keeping close track of my food intake. In the past, without the help of a food journal I have been my own worst enemy at sabotaging my weight loss goals. A food journal helped me to learn the right quality and quantity of food my body truly needed on a daily basis, no more, no less.

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Tagged as: busy mom, calorie intake, food journal, weight loss