Writing it Down
In the flurry of articles about making (and breaking) New Year’s Resolutions, there’s a lot of talk about writing things down and how it changes rates of successes. Writing down goals, especially when that writing is shared, is shown to help people stick to their plans and reach their goals.
I know many people losing weight swear by food journalling. For some this includes calorie counting or another system, for others it’s just a record of what they’ve ingested each day.
I used to calorie count, and it just made me mental, so that it is out for good. The more time I spend dealing with the mental aspects of weight loss, though, the more I realise I eat emotionally. Usually boredom is what gets me reaching for the snacks, but other things do too.
To try to figure this out, I want to start journalling my food intake. I don’t want to use SparkPeople or any of those other sites that give you calorie counts. I get way too mental over the numbers and lose track of the important things – how I’m feeling, when I’m eating, and what I’m eating.
So, for my oh-so-very-few readers – if you do this (or have done this in the past) – what do you use? What do you love/hate about it? I’m open to your suggestions!
Filed under: dieting | 4 Comments
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Not sure if this will fit with what you want, but i downloaded FitDay and I only use it to specifically track calories and exercise. I don’t put in moods and such because I don’t have time. I just need a way to keep myself accountable and see that it’s 2PM and I’ve eating 1400 calories. Depends on what you need…but it might help! You do have to set your metabolism at like comatose though for the calorie burns to be more accurrate.
Thanks for the tip, Amanda, I’ll check FitDay out. Do you know if you can record food *without* the calorie counts on it?
If you don’t input the info so that they can count your calories, won’t those webpages not count your calories? If you thwart it a bit but still use it, I mean.
I really like the graphing function at extrapounds.com. I know there’s a lot of stuff there that I don’t use, but I don’t know what, exactly.
Most of them automatically calculate the calories, unfortunately. You pick foods off their database, so the information is there automatically. I think what I’m looking for is a sort of journal-spreadsheet hybrid or something.
I’ll have a look at extrapounds and see if they have something that fits my needs – thanks for the tip!