Unfortunately, some people do not see the value in keeping a journal. Some reasons are that it's tedious, or they simply forget. As a nutrition professional, I cannot tell you how helpful it is for me to see your food journal! By completing one I can get a very good idea of your habits, as well as any changes or additions that you can make to further aid in improving your health. Perhaps you could think of us as food detectives!
With our method there is no need to focus on calorie counting or specific micronutrient intake. Let's see why! Number-driven food logging does not always take the nutritional quality of foods into account. Additionally, number-driven journaling can have a negative effect because you may become obsessed with the numbers. Also, you may feel the need to only focus on low-calorie foods, instead of truly learning how to nourish your body with wholesome foods. One small study looked at reasons individuals missed food journaling entries and discovered that "13 percent of respondents intentionally did not journal for not wanting to exceed their caloric budget for the day." How sad! Lastly,
number-focused food journaling could be dangerous for some individuals’ mindset. "One dietitian reported that if a client eats nourishing meals all week long, but then consciously chooses pizza for dinner on Friday night, seeing a high number of calories and grams of fat may interfere with positive progress the client has made in their relationship with food. This “all or nothing” mindset that many chronic dieters experience can lead to further discouragement and feelings of failure. This may even encourage an unhealthy relationship with food."
Thankfully, we focus on your total intake and look at it as a whole. To help us do that we have recently added the use of our Healthie app. Rather than a number-driven journal, Healthie’s patient friendly app utilizes photo-based food journaling. This is great because you can now easily take pictures of your food, post them in our app, and rate it with categories such as pre-meal hunger, post-meal fullness, perceived healthiness of the meal and more. Journaling this way allows you to take a view of your intake as a whole rather than being hyper-focused on the numbers.
Believe it or not, photos of your food have been shown to be an accurate tool to help estimate the nutrient content of your meals, as well as their portions! Plus, studies have shown that this type of journaling can lead to improvements in taste perception, recall of food eaten as well as the details surrounding the meal itself, journaling, trying new foods to help you become a better eater, make healthier food choices, and increase mindfulness with your intake. Interestingly, people reported feeling less judgment surrounding their food choices, which increases food journaling compliance. Pretty neat!
As always, we want to help you be more successful in reaching your goals, which is why we integrated photo food logging. Now you can easily and quickly track your food in our patient-friendly mobile app and we are notified in real-time of new journal entries. We may comment on journal entries to increase your engagement and accountability between sessions.
If you are an existing client and have not tried our Healthie app give it a whirl! Reach out to us too if you need help getting started. And, for those of you contemplating with working with us what's stopping you! We're happy to chat with you to see if our program is a good fit for you. Contact us today!
Reference: Healthie Staff, July 12, 2017, Photo Food Loggine: A Picture's Worth a Thousand Nutrients., http://blog.gethealthie.com/2017/07/12/photo-food-logging-a-pictures-worth-a-thousand-nutrients/
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