I hear ya Penny. If I'm avoiding fitday, I know something is wrong! and I'd better take a closer look at myself. For instance ... I haven't entered everything I binged on last night. Horrible
DeafinlySmart???? who's fitday were you refering to? you can pm me if you want to talk about it more.
I keep a food journal. It keeps me accountable - knowing I have to write down what I eat all day can motivate me to eat better. It's also good for making sure I'm eating ENOUGH. Eating too little is just as bad for me as eating too much!
I use computer software and it counts cals eaten/burned, ect...I like it alot, I have lost 10lbs since starting to use it. It really helps keep me in check, EVEN when I dont really want to log the food (I do anyways because I feel guilty of I dont..lol)
For about the first six months, I journaled my food. However, my goal is to develope habits that I want to keep up for the rest of my life, and I don't want to journal for the rest of my life. I want to be able to have an internal journal, so to speak, where I just know how much I need to eat a day without writing everything down. I used journalling as an educational tool, but now I am trying dieting without it.
Having mixed results, but I don't really think that my recent stall out is a result of my not journaling so much as a result of my being tired of dieting and the holidays rolling around. I do occasionally journal sample menus to see how many calories I am eating in a typical day.
But no, I no longer keep track of everything I eat.
I'm like Annie, I journal but then get sick of it. Problem is, I never have been able to go the internal keeping-track route. If I don't journal, I don't lose. (Although I seem to be able to maintain OK wihout journalling.)
For the first few weeks of my healthy living change early in the year, I journalled. But, I found for me, it was counter productive. I found myself dwelling on food and writing it down, and endless comparisons between days. So I tried doing it without it, and found no difference for me in the rate I lost weight. When I hit a plateau I do start journalling again, to make sure I am being honest about the amount I am eating.
I am not slavish about my caloried intake, and I vary my intake depending on my activitiy level, on quiet no exercise days I shoot for 1200 - 1300 on active days I can go as high as 1800.
It's taken some time, and a few mistakes along the way to find out what works for me, and I am forever changing what I do as my body changes.
I hate fitday, I really have tried, but it just doesn't like me!!!
I employ the eat till you are full method, but much much later in the dieting efforts. The reason is we've trained ourselves to be in the spot we are in. Our food habits don't change overnight. Journaling does make me more obsessive about food and what I eat, but it serves a means to an end. I'm reteaching myself how to eat again. For me, I gain every time I get pregnant. Then afterwards, I keep eating like I'm pregnant. Then 2-3 years when my mothering routine is more established I get sick of looking like this and retrain my body. It takes effort. When you first learn how to do something, you had to work at it. It does get easier because it becomes a habit. The trick is staying at it long enough for that to happen and then periodically remind yourself so you don't go haywire. Journaling, at least for me, is not a forever thing therefore I don't mind the tediousness of it.
I need the rhythm and routine of a journal. I personally can not use fit day because I am not able to rely on myself to remember to record something ex post facto. So it is a notebook for me - I also use it as a scrap book - and regular journal. It is also a handy reference to see when you ate what and how successful you were...
I am glad I found this thread. Today is my first day on the plan and I was wondering what other people thought of journaling. For me, I think it is going to be a good idea. My plan is to eat 1500 calories each day and I tend to eat small meals throughout the day. I like having a running tally of how many calories I have eaten for the day. I am one of those people who has to eat something, anything, before I go to bed. (I know that many people say it is not a good idea to eat before bed, but if I do that, all I do is want food more.) Since, I know that I have consumed 1330 calories today, then I can have a small snack before bed. Definitely nothing heavy, don't want that nauseous feeling.
I am doing it the pen and paper method as opposed to on the web.
Jodi - I think the biggest problem with eating beofre bed is that it forces your body to digest food instead of rest. I have also read that night time is when your body manufactures cholesteral.
That said - my dh eats before bed all the time and apparently sleeps just fine. So - I guess it can be different for everyone.
I don't, and haven't done at any point during my weight loss. I did try fitday once, but it seemed too hard to use when it's all based on US foods/measurements that I'd have to think about to adapt to what I actually eat.
I keep a mental note of things in my head, but I have been trying to develop a healthy but intuitive attitude to food. So what that means is basically that as long as everything in my house is pretty healthy, I eat whatever of it I want. I wanted to be able to trust myself to make decent choices rather than relying on rules (because I'm not following a rule based plan, and I worried that writing down amounts etc would push me towards getting hung up on eating a certain number of calories rather than simply what feels right).
However, one of the reasons I don't really journal is that when I'm at work I eat pretty much the same food every day anyway, then allow myself a free choice of evening meal. So there's not really much that changes from day to day, I know it fits in with what I'm trying to do, and there's not much to be gained from writing it down.
It's not for everyone, and if I found myself going off track I might need to start analysing a lot more to find out why, but as long as it works then I'll keep on doing it.
I'm Canadian and have found the same problem as Helen. I find I have to customize alot of foods but that's OK, because then they stay in my pull-down menu forever. Then I don't have to go hunt for them.
