The Power of Journaling

Writing down everything that goes in your mouth is SO important when trying to lose fat and get into shape. 

Here is what has helped me:
     Like I stated in the last post, I plan my meals the night before.  This takes the guess work out, and all I have to do is run on autopilot the next day, checking to see what my next meal is.
     There are times when something comes up and I can't eat what I planned, so I just mark that entry out, and write what I am eating instead, however, the fact that I am journaling is keeping me 100% aware of what's going in my mouth.
     Now when I first started journaling, years ago, I did the "journal as you go" method, and often I would forget to write something down, or "pretend" I didn't just eat that cookie.  The problem with that was towards the end of the day when I craved something, I would check with my journal to see if I could "afford" it, and it looked like I could!  I was cheating myself on a daily basis, and I failed at my attempt to lose weight many times.
     When I did finally change things up, I started making healthier choices.  If I craved something at lunch, I was able to look and see that my next meal was something just as yummy and satisfying so I would just wait another hour or so and enjoy!
     I journal what I'm going to eat every night.  Sure, I've gotten frustrated and thought to myself "why on Earth am I doing this?", but I know that it will give results.  It keeps me on track, prevents bad choices, and actually keeps things quite simple for me! :)

It is impossible to fix a problem if you have no idea what the problem is.  I've heard time and time again people saying, "I eat healthy."  Well so do I, but if I'm eating too much of a healthy thing, I'll still gain weight or not reach my goals.  Which leads me to another point:  MEASURING
     Take journaling to the next level - measure your food.  Have you ever measured a chicken breast??  For the longest time I thought I was getting 4-6oz of chicken per breast, and the day I finally got a food scale I was blown away - 12oz!!!  That's 3 servings I was eating at one meal!  Measure, measure, measure!  If you are like me, your eyes are bigger than your stomach.  If you hate measuring, then do the "simple measure" system - eat as much carbs as you can fit in the palm of your hand - that will typically end up being 1/2c for a female, more for a male.  Proteins should be the size of your clenched fist, and fats the size of the top of your thumb.  This is the easy way.  Either way, I encourage you to measure your food, you might be surprised what you've been eating all along.

So - journaling = IMPORTANT.  It makes you AWARE, and you are more likely to make smart choices when you have to be accountable.
Measuring = Also IMPORTANT.  If you are just writing vague ideas of what you ate in  your journal, you might mislead yourself and end up over-eating.  Measure, measure, measure - you will begin to see what 4-6 small meals really look like!

I'll be cooking a Clean Eating deep dish pizza tonight - if all goes well, I'll have the recipe up tonight! :)