Three Day Log

In one of my college nutrition courses we had to a log three days of eating as part of an assignment.

The requirements were log everything we consumed for three days and at least one of the days had to be a weekend.

We estimated portion sizes and used nutrition fact labels to calculate our total calories and macros for each of the three days. It's funny, just a relatively short time ago we didn't even have hundreds of apps to choose from to log our food intake and look up macros. We had to manually look up each food on a computer! Call me old fashioned, but I feel as though writing it down by hand gives you a better chance to reflect on what you've been eating.

Besides that, two points from this assignment have stuck with me.

First, you don’t really know what you’re consuming until you write it down. We all underestimate, or overestimate and forget about things that can add up. Running a tally in your head is helpful, but leaves opportunity for missed details.

You can imagine what a classroom full of college student's weekend food log looked like. That assignment showed me that one big off the rails day can deter progress - especially when it isn't one isolated day, but instead one (or two) days each and every week.

If you're spinning your nutritional wheels and starting to feel stuck, get out of the rut by collecting some data. Log at least three days, more would be better, and take a look at your food choices. You don't even need to log calories or macros to get started, just look at what you're consuming and see if you can make any obvious changes. You might be surprised at what you find.

Justin Miner

@justinminergain