I've been logging my food for nearly two weeks now. I started it with the hopes of helping to improve my results on my habit tracker page, also in my Bullet Journal, specifically on reducing the amount of chocolate I eat.
I know I can eat less chocolate. A couple of times I've given up chocolate for a whole thirty-one days with no adverse effects, the one thing that I did notice when I did that was that I would inevitably end up snacking on other things instead.
Which is where the Food Log comes in.
I'm not being obsessive about it, since I'm doing it to be healthy, rather than in an effort to lose weight. If I'd had more time to organise it, I'd have formatted it a little better. Instead I just listed out the days of the month with 'BREAKFAST', 'LUNCH', 'DINNER' and 'SNACKS' with a line for each. Occasionally I'll have 'SUPPER' too, but that just gets added on at the end of whichever line has the most space (usually the 'dinner' line).
As you can see from the photo above, I just write in what I've eaten during the day.
By last Thursday I thought I was beginning to notice a pattern, so I adapted my BuJo Food Log page slightly. Rather than writing everything in with black pen, I've adopted a sort of colour coding system. Foods eaten at home are black, foods eaten at work are in blue and things eaten anywhere else are green (for the purposes of my tracker, 'home' is not just my home, but my family members' homes as well).
This clarified the pattern I thought I was starting to see.
I snack way more at work than at home.
I suppose it's because at home I can get up and do stuff. I might be sitting and watching TV, but I'll be able to pick up my knitting or colouring in and distract my hands. At work I'll sit there, with a bag of something tasty on my desk, and I'll dip into it while I deal with an email or pop some notes on the system. In fact, the tasties don't even need to be on my desk. We're a sharing sort of group and someone usually puts something yummy out for us to help ourselves to.
I'm trying to come up with some healthy snacking alternatives, possibly carrot sticks and celery, which I can nibble on guilt-free, but if nothing else, at least I'm aware of my predisposition for nibbling on naughties throughout the day at work.
And I probably wouldn't have made the connection if I hadn't gone to the effort of writing it all down. Score another one for the BuJo!
What're some of your favourite healthy snacks to nibble on?
I like to snack on chips or nuts when I'm at my computer.
ReplyDeleteI've picked up some walnuts to snack on at work this week, I had peanuts a couple of weeks ago. We're not supposed to have crisps or chocolate at our desks, but fruit and nuts are okay.
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