Starting a Healthy Eating Plan? Do This First.

If you’re thinking of getting healthy, then girl, here is a HUGE virtual high five from me. Since your thoughts dictate your actions, which then govern your results, the mere decision to get healthy is the first step toward changing your life for the better.

Before you get started on your new eating plan, though, you’ve gotta know where you’re starting from. That way, you can truly gauge how certain foods make you feel and fully experience the benefits your new way of eating brings you.

Enter food tracking. An eating plan.

When you can look back at the past few days and see the foods you ate, it helps you make a connection between your food intake and how you feel. Constantly feeling low energy? Maybe you’re eating too much sugar. Never feeling satisfied from your food? Perhaps you’re not eating enough protein (or fat). Just feeling, basically, like crap all the time? Then girl, you might be in need of a complete eating overhaul.

Knowing where you’re starting from also shows you where you need to go and more specifically, the exact areas where you can improve. More than knowing why you feel a certain way from certain foods (or a lack thereof), it’s important to focus on what to do next in order to improve it.

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Here’s What To Do

• Grab a pen and paper (or if you’re feelin’ fancy, start a new google doc), and write down the next three days starting tomorrow, each one as a heading. So, if you’re reading this on a Wednesday, you would write down Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Leave yourself lots of space in between each heading.
• Starting tomorrow, write down every single thing you eat and drink. Like, everything. You had a bite of a cookie? Write it down. One sip of coffee? Put it. A crumb of cake? You know what to do. (Also, how did you just stop at one crumb? You are GOOD!)
• At the end of each day, jot down how you felt overall. Maybe you had super low energy, were gassy, or just felt really moody (or the winning combo… all three). Or maybe you felt great. Either way, write ‘er down.
• After the three days are up, look back at what you’ve written. Take note of certain patterns, like when you do most of your snacking, whether or not your meals are at consistent (ish) times, and which foods you tend to go for.
• Now that you know where you’re starting from, you can make a better plan of action as far as where you’re going. If you find you tend to snack mostly at night, switch that out for an herbal tea (unless you’re genuinely hungry, in which case, eat a protein- and fat-rich snack… and assess what your dinner might’ve been lacking in order to properly satisfy you). Do you constantly skip out on lunch? Be conscious about including it each day in your new eating plan. If you tend to reach for the carby carbs (bread, pasta, crackers and so on), plan to add in more good fats instead (they’re way more satisfying and nourishing… and also delicious).

The Thing to Keep in Mind

Do yourself a favour and be as honest as you can. Just because you’re tracking doesn’t mean that you should eat that salad because you want to write it down.

Would you really be planning on having that salad if you were just by yourself, no tracking needed? If yes, then great… but if not, don’t eat it. (I know, right? Here I am telling you not to eat salad. Don’t get used to it, *wink*.)

The thing is, the more honest you are with yourself here, the better the result you will get. And the bottom line is, it really is you being honest with yourself; there is no confession to others needed (unless you want to, in which case, I’m all ears!).

The better you can track three honest days in a row, the more easily you’ll be able to see where you can improve.

Have you ever tracked your food intake? Did you find it helpful? Let me know below.

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