Santa's looking lean and mean this year thanks to his food journal.
A food journal is one of the most powerful tools you can use to achieve your weight loss, health, and fitness goals. It’s hard enough to eat healthy during non-holidays, so you can imagine how much more difficult it is to stay committed to a program of wellness when surrounded by extra food. We can often find ourselves grabbing an extra handful of cookies here or a second home-baked brownie there, not realizing how much we’re actually putting into our mouths.
It’s true that seasonal treats make the holidays special and add to the overall enjoyment of the season. It’s also true that if we overindulge, we can cause repercussions, such as increased weight and lowered self-esteem, that last well past the holiday season. Worse yet, we may completely derail our programs for months and lose our motivation to lose weight, achieve our optimum fitness levels or maintain the health we’ve worked so hard to achieve.
Keeping a food journal helps us to stay accountable and on-track. If we know we’ll need to write down what we’re eating, we tend to stick more closely to our programs. For example, we may have one glass of wine at a dinner party instead of two or have two cookies for a snack instead of three. We may decide to take a 20-minute walk in the morning instead of sleeping in.
Using a food and fitness diary helps us to make good choices. When we see what we’re eating in black and white, we can identify eating patterns we might not have been aware of. For example, if we were at a holiday potluck at lunch and see that we ate more starchy foods than we normally do, we may decide to balance out our day by choosing a salad with protein for dinner and drink more water.
While it’s certainly important to enjoy the holidays, it’s equally important that we take extra good care of ourselves. A food and fitness journal can be your ticket to enjoying the holidays to their fullest and still reaching your wellness goals.
{ 0 comments }
