How a 3-Day Food Log Will Change Your Life

Logging food sounds like a daunting and obnoxious task. Calorie counting and macro-counting are so 2019, right? Right! However, a food log is a bit different. No calorie or macro-counting here. A food log is the quickest way to begin eating what you want when you want, or in other words, intuitively eating.

A food log is a list of the foods you ate at a specific time and the symptoms you felt afterward. You will want to track things like:

-What you ate for breakfast, lunch, and dinner
-How you felt up to 2 hours after your meal
-Did you sleep well / how many hours?
-Did you go to the bathroom today?
-What was your stool like?
-How much water did you drink?
-Did you feel bloated after your meal? Headache? Indigestion? Stomach ache?

Write it all down!

This gives you the best insight into what foods are making you feel good and what foods are making you feel bad. Many people are not in tune with their own body, and logging a food journal for three short days will do just that. It will be easy to review, and you will begin to notice patterns. For example, every morning you drink two cups of coffee, and every morning you log that by 10 a.m., you start feeling sluggish and tired. On day three, maybe you try to only have one cup of coffee and see if that changes how you feel, or maybe you try eating a nutritious breakfast with your coffee and see if that improves your energy. Now you can experiment because you are beginning to understand the patterns of your own body.

Once you understand these patterns and you figure out what works for your body, you can begin eating more intuitively. Intuitive eating is the holy grail of health for your mind and your body. Eating what you want when you want. Sounds awesome, right? It is only achievable if you can listen to your body and what it wants and needs. If you feel a headache coming on, you will begin to recognize what food caused that and maybe eat less of it next time, or you will realize you didn’t drink enough water that day. You will be able to diagnose your own symptoms and help treat yourself so you can live stress-free with childlike energy. Isn’t that the reason everyone wants to get healthy anyway?