Hey peeps!
As you know I like providing you with lots of great free tools to help you be more healthy and reach your goal… Something I used a lot with my personal training clients over the years has been a food diary. Simple printable sheets where you enter the food you digest as well as any drinks / alcohol over the course of a week and you can also put in the exercise you did too.
This is great because it allows me to see a snapshot of exactly what food intake has been occurring and also allows the client to quickly see the mistakes they are making. 9/10 times a client would be shocked at what they had eaten becuase they could see it before them, it was a really powerful tool to create change. With a food diary, it’s clear where the challenges are with not only in relation to fat loss but energy, focus and everything to help you reach your goal.
You can download my printable food diary here.
I sit down with my client’s and tell them what simple changes they could make and often this had to do with just a frequency which are eating i.e. they were in eating too little – and in came the lunch box little and often strategy to solve the problems.
With the advent of iPhones, iPads, other digital devices and namely apps, tracking your progress has never been easier and only the other day I came across a fantastic FREE app which I wanted you to see called Pic Healthy – a photo food diary system.
Pic Healthy is an a easy-to-use iPhone application which takes the normal food diary idea and turns it into a picture food diary. I absolutely love this idea and I’ll tell you why.
Although the benefits of a printable food diary are fantastic just the motion of taking a photo of what you’re about to eat will make you think twice about whether you should be making the right or wrong choices. For example if you know that each time you eat a meal you need to take a picture and then you suddenly actively think about taking a picture of a doughnut you can think twice about whether to eat our food not but regardless of what you do decide to eat, you’re able to track over the course of the day and week how much quality nutrition you are getting into your body and you are able to rates each of your meals in terms of how healthy think they are.
This is good, but do remember that what you think is healthy, and the reality of that can be two different things altogether depending on your knowledge.
You can then see a snapshot of the meals over the day / week and see an overall score to see whether you need to improve or not. So for lunchbox dieters I would recommend taking a photo of your breakfast, taking a photo of your lunchbox taking a photo of your evening meal with any drinks in-between, because the nutrition content of drinks is of course essential. If you’re not a lunch box dieter then you will probably be eating more unhealthy snacks throughout the day, so snap those and start eliminating them over time.
If you’re working with a personal trainer who normally uses a food diary strategy then the photo food diary is a brilliant addition to bring to their attention to help them see whether you are progressing in the right direction.
Of course over of a period of time you will be able to see how your nutrition improves and if you’re still eating the same sugary / fatty foods you were three months ago there’s something drastic that needs to be changed in your diet so you start moving on a healthier path.
Someone who starts exercise begins to jog eventually begins to run on then begins to sprint. You need to see the same progress with what you eat and how healthier you become.
I particularly like the photo food diary for lunchbox dieters because it will enable you to look back at the tasty boxes and remind yourself which ones you really enjoyed so you can revisit a similar combinations next time.
This also would also be absolutely fantastic to give to children as a way for you to track their food intake during the day - it can be a fun game which can turn into a learning curve for any parent which is vital for a child health to ensure optimum energy and good behaviour patterns. Anything you can turn from a game into a healthy tool to build their awareness (and yours) is a great thing in my book.
You can download the Pic Healthy here.
So have you used the food diary system before and will you be upgrading to a picture food diary from now on what are your thoughts? I would love to know below in the comments, maybe with ideas on other ways to use this…
Tags: Advent, Alcohol, Challenges, Diary System, Doughnut, Drinks, Energy Focus, Exercise, Food Intake, Free Diary, Free Photo, Free Tools, Gaps, Iphone, Lunch Box, Personal Training, Photo Food, Pictu, Printable Food Diary, Printable Sheets, Simple Changes, Snapshot, Wrong Choices
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