What do you think of when you hear “food journaling”?
Does it bring up any past experiences or specific expectations?

Food journaling is simply the act of keeping track of what you are eating in some way. This can sometimes involve counting macronutrients and/or calories and sometimes not. The purpose of food journaling is to help you meet your nutrition goals by gaining insights into your eating habits and pinpointing the steps you need to take to make a change.

In other words, food journaling is about digging deeper to try to understand your eating better in some way. Why do we want to dig deeper? Well, as a culture, we tend to oversimplify the process of meeting many goals, especially nutrition-related and weight-related goals as a simple matter of willpower.

Of course, putting effort toward your goal is necessary. However, when it isn’t coupled with the right knowledge and tools, or if it isn’t a realistic goal, even all the willpower in the world is not enough. Think about this analogy. If a person failed to dig a hole in the ground with a spoon, you wouldn’t identify the problem as lack of effort. Rather, you would think the problem is that the person isn’t using a shovel.

This rings very true for those pursuing bariatric surgery. Research shows that <5% of individuals with obesity are able to lose weight and maintain the weight loss long-term using non-surgical methods. The fact is—dieting doesn’t work for the vast majority of people. But throughout years of yoyo dieting, many people absorb the message that their success hinges on their willpower or lack thereof. Many diets and weight loss programs essentially do little more than give out a list of rules, “good” foods, and “bad” foods, and figuring out how to shoehorn those rules in to your unique circumstances is up to you.

This is where individualized counseling with a dietitian can be beneficial. Having nutrition counseling sessions regularly where you can discuss your progress, problem solve difficulties, make plans and set goals can help you stay motivated and on track.

And one thing that can make these sessions more effective is some form of a food journaling. In some situations, it can be difficult for both yourself and your dietitian to pinpoint what needs to be changed without a more detailed record of your eating beyond what you can recall. After all, we eat every day, multiple times a day. Remembering what you ate a week ago may be as difficult as remembering what you dreamed. But being more conscious of and recording what is happening in the moment or shortly thereafter may be the key to figuring out the root of the problem and solving it. Just like dream journaling will cause you to lucid dream, food journaling will bring you a new awareness that can help you identify the roots of different problems and solve them more effectively.

So now that we have discussed why food journaling is generally beneficial, let’s discuss the different ways you can food journal…

METHOD 1: TRACKING CALORIES AND MACROS

This is most well-known method of food logging. I typically recommend the app Baritastic to use for this, although there are many similar apps such as MyfitnessPal and LoseIt. I focus on Baritastic because it is catered toward bariatric surgery patients and has several useful features in addition to the ability to keep a food diary, such as setting reminders and offering bariatric-friendly recipes. Unlike most food journal apps, it is also 100% free (because who needs another monthly subscription, right?!).

As you enter the foods you eat into your log in Baritastic, the app will keep a tally of your calories, protein, fiber, and so on. This data can be very helpful for many people. This is especially true if you feel “stuck” despite feeling like you are making positive efforts to improve your eating habits or if you simply feel unsure if you are on the right path.

Let’s run through an example to illustrate this point. Let’s say Betty is trying to eat a more balanced, high protein diet. She is including more of the foods she believes are high in protein and will facilitate her weight loss goals without losing muscle. She states she is eating foods such as cream cheese, beans, quinoa, chicken, and peanut butter to try to ensure she is getting enough protein. The following are her daily goals: 1200-1300 calories, 80-100 grams protein, and 25+ grams of fiber.

With only this information, it may be difficult to conceptualize how Betty’s food choices are serving her goals. I might point out to Betty that cream cheese is not really a good source of protein and quinoa, beans, hummus and peanut butter have moderate amounts of protein but more healthy starch or fat compared to protein. But what is she supposed to do with this knowledge?

She may assume that I am hinting that these are “bad” foods and the she should stop eating them. However, this is not the intended message at all. In fact, all of these foods can be included and still meet Betty’s goals. It just depends on the amounts, how often she is eating them, and how they balance with the other foods. Let’s say Betty downloads Baritastic and tracks a day of her intake to try to dig deeper.

Betty is actually meeting her calorie goal but not her protein goal so she may lose weight but some weight may be from muscle. This could slow down her weight loss prematurely or make it difficult to maintain her weight loss. However, rather than conclude that this means that some of the foods she included in this day were bad, we can make a few simple swaps and adjustments to meet her protein goal. For example, she might swap the bagel for ½ of a whole wheat bagel and add smoked salmon. She might add nutritional yeast to her lunch to make her plant-based meal higher in protein. She might add a cup of milk and swap the peanut butter for a higher-protein product called PB2. Let’s see what that looks like.

This is just one example of the little changes Betty could have made. In fact, there are many creative ways that fit many different preferences that we could have adjusted to meet Betty’s protein needs better. As you can see, making these adjustments increased the protein and fiber in Betty’s diet. These two things would make her diet more satisfying and sustainable as well.

In summary, getting an objective idea of things such as calories and protein can help you see what adjustments would be needed to meet your goals where this might otherwise be guesswork. It can also help you see that there are many different ways to meet a goal without any rigid rules forbidding any specific foods. On the other hand, this method is consistent with the “all foods fit” mindset.

So now that we have discussed the pros, what about the downsides? Well, one of the most common downsides for many people is that tracking can sometimes feel like a punitive and negative experience. Many people feel guilt around eating certain foods or exceeding their goals and avoid tracking on “bad” days or “cheat days”. They may feel like the app is a source of negative reinforcement, there to make them feel bad if they don’t meet their goal. Whether you will feel this way about tracking will likely depend on your perspective and your past experiences. In some cases, people are able to reframe the way they think about tracking and look at it as a tool for insight rather than something punitive. In other cases, this may be very difficult to do if you have feelings of guilt surrounding eating that are very deep-seated and/or if you have a negative past experience with food tracking. If this is you, then you will likely benefit from using method 2, discussed a little later in this chapter.

Beyond this, the most obvious downside is simply that it does require some time commitment to manually put in the foods you are eating. Moreover, it can be frustrating whenever it is challenging to be 100% accurate because you are tracking something that is not in the database. On the bright side, however, the technology driving these apps are improving every day. Features like being able to scan bar codes, copy and paste online recipes, and speaking your meals can make the task of logging much quicker and easier. This is why I always encourage clients to visit Baritastic’s website and review their videos on how to use the app. Doing this can make their experience much easier.

So to recap, here are the pros and cons of Method 1:

PROS:

• Helps you understand where you stand objectively with meeting your nutrition goals so that you can make effective changes. This is especially good when you feel “stuck”, despite feeling like you are making efforts that seem like they should yield weight loss.
• Room for flexibility and conducive to the “all foods fit” mindset. No hard limits or foods labeled as “good” or “bad”.
• App features when used to their full potential can make tracking easier and less time consuming.

CONS:

• Can feel punitive or like negative reinforcement which can lead to omitting important details from the food journal or giving up altogether.
• Requires at least some time commitment and effort toward getting into the habit of logging your foods.

So how you do you know if tracking in this way is right for you? Well, if you answer yes to the following, then it is probably worth a shot:

• Will tracking protein, calories, and/or other macronutrients potentially help you get unstuck or feel more confident about meeting your goals?
• Are you able to think of tracking as a “tool for insight” to help guide you and pin down a plan rather than as a means of negative reinforcement?
• Are you willing and able to commit time to get into the habit of logging your foods each day?

…But what if you answered no to any of those questions? Well, the good news is that there is another method of food journaling that is a little bit different, which may work better for some individuals.

METHOD 2: JOURNALING WITHOUT THE NUMBERS

There are certainly apps and methods of journaling that do not require counting calories and macronutrients. Among apps, perhaps the most notable of these is an app called Nourishly (different versions of which exist under different names “Recovery Record”, “Baritopia”, etc.). But this method can also apply to something as simple as recording your intake with a notebook and a pencil.

As the title suggests, the common denominator is that this method will not track numbers like protein and calories. But what is the advantage of this? Well, there are a few reasons this may be better for some individuals.

The first reason is that for some people, tracking calories and other numbers can turn into an obsession and/or be extremely anxiety provoking. This is especially true in individuals who have had negative experiences with dieting or calorie counting and for individuals who have struggled with disordered eating. Essentially, in deciding the best path, it is important to consider the most basic end goal—to improve your health and wellbeing. And if you are in a place in your journey where tracking calories and macros is coming at the expense of your mental health, then it is not serving that goal.

Even if you are in a headspace where you are able to track calories/macros in a healthy way, there may be some situations as well where other methods may still offer more value. This is especially true if you are in a situation where you are fairly confident about how you need to change your eating habits. For example, you might have a habit of drinking soda or sweet tea, and you know you would probably lose weight if you could only kick the habit. Or the issue may be eating out or eating fast foods, and you know that if you cooked at home more, this would get you on the right track. However, these habits may be rooted in issues like emotional eating or not eating mindfully. Or it may just be challenging to form a new habit—after all, that is the very nature of habits! In these cases, using an app that is more focused on helping and encouraging you to change those behaviors may be more beneficial.

The app, Nourishly, in particular is especially useful for helping you change your habits. It is highly customizable, allowing you to choose from a variety of “missions” and “focus areas” to allow you to hone in on the area you are most concerned about. Adjusting these missions and focus areas will individualize the questions you are asked when journaling to your goals. This can help motivate you and keep you focused to master the right habits and skills for you to succeed. The questions your journal will ask you are highly customizable, and you can fill out as little or as many of the questions as you want. There is even a thought diary where you can write anything if there is something that doesn’t quite fit any of the questions available.

For those who are pressed for time (aren’t we all?), the app also allows you to snap a photo of your meal or snack in lieu of a journal entry. This is wonderful if you want to log but are pressed for time in the moment. Just snap a pic now, and reflect on your day later when you have more time.

Another excellent feature of Nourishly is that you can use it help you stay on track with nutrition-specific goals as well, just without the calories and macros. This can be done by setting a goal for “exchanges” aka how many servings of a food group you plan to eat in a day. For example, 1 protein exchange is 1 ounce. For reference, 1 ounce of a protein is roughly the size of 2 dice. Similarly, 3 ounces is about the size of a deck of cards. To make sure you are getting adequate protein, you can set an exchange goal for protein. For example, let’s say your goal is to get 10 protein exchanges a day. Each time you eat a meal of snack containing protein, you can log the number of protein exchanges you ate, and the number will count down until you have finished this goal. You can do this for all your food groups.

And here are the pros and cons of Method 2:

PROS:

• A great way to food journal if tracking calories and/or macros is a potentially unhealthy trigger for obsessive thinking or anxiety.
• Useful for focusing on building skills and habits that address the root of the problem.
• Can be less time consuming, even allowing the possibility of taking photos of meals and snacks.

CONS:

• Not as effective if your main goal is weight loss and the reasons you are not meeting your goals are not as obvious.
• For Nourishly: The amount of customizable options for questions can be overwhelming at first.

So, in summary this option may be right for you if you answer yes to the following questions:

• Would tracking calories or macros trigger anxious or obsessive thinking?
• Do you have a good idea of how to change your eating habits but struggle with the skills and habits you need to form to make that change?
• Is the time commitment needed to track calories/macros unrealistic for you and you would be better off with an option that can be quicker and easier?

All in all, both options for food journal have their own strengths. Regardless of how you choose to food journal, one thing is for sure: you are on the path to gaining useful insights and being more aware of your food choices and the things that influence them.

Happy jounraling!!