Food journaling means writing down what you eat - everything you eat.

It can seem like a daunting task, yet it can have plenty of benefits - weight loss, weight management, dealing with food allergies, developing healthy food habits, etc.

Holding yourself accountable for what you eat can have a significant impact on your health.

Food journals are also often used by healthcare professionals and dietitians to understand your eating habits as well as to track foods and ingredients you are sensitive to.

10 Benefits Of Food Journaling

They help you remember what you ate

Remembering what you ate and when is definitely a useful ‘skill’. It can help you decide what to eat next, what to buy at the grocery store, figure out what’s causing stomach irritation, and so on.

While it may seem like a simple thing, tons of people don’t remember what they ate the day before, let alone the week before.

That’s where food journaling comes in.

If you need to see what you ate, for whatever reason, you can simply open up your food journal, and have it all outlined by dates.

Always knowing you can easily check what you eat and drink is definitely helpful, so a food diary is something to consider.

They let you see if you’re eating enough or too much

Being aware of how much you actually eat is so important, no matter if you’re working on losing weight, maintaining weight, or gaining weight.

Oftentimes we eat more or less than we’re aware of.

That’s why food journaling is so handy - you can see if your portion sizes are too big or too small when you look at the whole day of eating. You can also see if you skipped some meals, or ate some extra meals.

It also helps you practice mindful eating - when you see if you’re eating too much or too little, you can figure out if you’re sometimes eating out of boredom, or stress.

They help you build healthy eating habits

Having a food diary is an amazing way to build healthy eating habits.

By having an outline of what you eat on a daily basis, you can detect each unhealthy habit you have, and figure out how to improve and build healthy habits.

That will help you eat healthier, and make better food choices.

By looking at your food diary, you can look at the big picture - how often you’re eating, if you have enough time between your meals in order to process the food, if you’re eating too many carbs or fats in one day, if your overall full day of eating is healthy, etc.

They help you identify food sensitivities

There are many food allergies and food intolerances you can have.

If you’re experiencing some stomach (or other) issues, you should seek medical advice, of course. But the doctor will likely ask you what you eat on a regular basis, what you ate in the previous days, and how often you eat it.

So, having a food diary will help both them and you.

You can see when you start having issues, and see which foods you ate (or didn’t eat) before that - that will help you eliminate possible intolerances, and create a list of the possible ones.

It will also make the whole testing process with your doctor a bit faster.

They help you identify unhealthy eating triggers

Emotional eating is a real thing, and many people deal with it constantly. So, having a food journal can help you identify your unhealthy eating triggers and emotional eating triggers - you can see when you ate badly, and you can try to figure out if there was anything going on that caused it - extra stress, sadness, excitement, etc.

They help you drink more water

If you’re not drinking enough water, having a food journal can help with that, as you can have a section that tracks your water intake.

They help you exercise more

A weight loss food journal can also have a section for planning and tracking your exercises, which can help you work out more.

They help you plan your meals

Meal planning is great for so many reasons, and having a food journal helps you do meal planning with ease, as you can use your journal to make weekly meal plans, monthly meal plans, and daily meal plans, as well as write down all meal ideas that you come up with.

They help you reach your goals

Overall, food journals help you reach your goals, whether you have weight loss goals, weight gain goals, or weight maintenance goals.

How to keep a food journal

Keep track as you go

The easiest way to keep a food journal is to keep track as you go. If you do it at the end of the day, chances are, you’ll forget something.

So, after each meal or snack, write what you ate.

Your food journal can be small so you can also easily bring it with you when you eat out.

That will help you make sure you didn’t forget anything, and it will help make a habit out of it. Soon, you’ll start doing it automatically.

Be specific

Don’t just write “For lunch I ate pasta” - be specific. Write down all ingredients (you can also induce measures if you know them, so you can easily keep track of portion sizes).

Write everything

Don’t just write the foods, write everything. Write down each drink you have, as well as your feelings, especially when you eat a meal you don’t usually have (for example, if you suddenly feel the need to eat at 2 am which is unusual for you).

Also, track the time of day you eat - noting the time can help you notice a pattern.

Use an app

Instead of using a regular journal, you can use an app if you think that will be easier for you. There are tons of apps for food journaling, so you can try out a few and see which one you like the best.

That’s especially a good option if you often don’t eat at home - it will help you make sure you always have your food diary with you.

Best Food Journal Apps

Here are some great apps you can use if you don’t want to use a regular journal.

My Fitness Pal

This is a popular app for tracking what you eat, counting calories, setting weight loss goals (or weight gain or weight maintenance goals), and tracking your weight loss progress. It’s one of the best apps to assist you with your weight loss journey.

Food Diary

This app serves as a food journal and helps you track what you eat.

Lifesum

This is a great app for simplifying weight loss with a recipe library, food log, and calorie counter. This is another great app to have if you’re food journaling for weight loss.

Food Journal Ideas

Here are some journal prompts and ideas for your food journal:

Meal tracker - you can create a table that you will fill out each day with your journal entries of what you eat during the day
Hunger levels - you can add a tracker will little squares where you pain a square each day to showcase the level of your hunger, which can help you figure out when you’re extra hungry and why
Mood tracker - tracking your mood, as well as thoughts and feelings along with your food can help you figure out when you’re emotional-eating
Water tracker - you can add a section to track how much water you’re drinking each day
Meal planner - you can have a section to plan your meals and list down meal ideas, either in a bullet journal form, or another way that suits you, as meal planning is a big part of food journaling