Food Tracking

Do you have to track your food to live well? To lose weight? To be properly fueled for your lifestyle? Let's look at some of the advantages and disadvantages.

First, let's talk about goals - do you have specific goals that are realistic, time-constrained and measurable? Do you have a nutrition plan that outlines how much of which macronutrients (or even micronutrients) you should be eating? Are you on a plan that limits your sodium or sets a goal range for protein or carbs, for example? If so, then tracking can help you to be confident that you're hitting those goals, and can help your nutrition coach or appropriate medical professional gain insight into your food choices so that they can suggests adjustments in food choices or make small changes to your plan to make sure it's working for you. We are data-driven professionals, and the better the data, the better our advice can be tailored to you... and the more consistently you'll be moving in the direction of achieving your goals.

If your primary goal is to lose weight or to fuel an athletic pursuit, tracking intake can help you make sure that you're eating the right amount of the right types of foods to support those goals. There is a 'sweet spot' for calories (and within calories, for macronutrients) to maximize fat loss while retaining enough energy to safely work out and make sure your daily activities/tasks are supported. Similarly, there is a 'sweet spot' for athletic performance, where performance and lean mass gains are appropriately supported with plenty of calories, and without gaining excessive amounts of fat. Dialing those in on an individual basis works most efficiently with detailed food tracking and eating to a plan that is personalized for you.

If your goals are less specific, and more along the lines of "eat more vegetables", then detailed food tracking may not be as important to reaching your goals, and something more like menu planning for the week to make sure you're eating at least one serving of vegetables at each meal, or a few different types of vegetables throughout the week (for example) may be a better approach. I find that if you're not writing down your meal plan, it's hard sometimes to visualize whether or not you've actually made the change you're attempting to make. Writing down goals and progress helps to hold yourself accountable, and (hard truth here) just because you're buying more of the 'healthy' food doesn't mean you're actually eating it - many refrigerator crisper drawers have fallen victim to the mystery sludge of good intentions, and those veggies didn't count if you didn't eat them.

If you're new to food journaling/tracking, you don't need to spend a lot of money on it. You can go old-school with a notebook and pen (or go find some cute printable journal pages from your favorite Etsy or Tedooo creator), and there are also some great free mobile apps/websites that let you select foods from a database and track. If you're only interested in tracking one nutrient, like sodium, fiber, or sugar, you may prefer to use a notebook or spreadsheet rather than tracking all of the nutrients. Tracking without an app will require reading nutrition facts labels and doing some basic math based on the portion size you actually eat if it varies from what a 'serving size' is on the label, and then tallying up the daily totals.

Food tracking apps are a great tool for detailed journaling - choose the food you're eating, make sure your portion size matches what you ate, and they do the math for you. My personal favorite of the popular food tracking apps is Cronometer (app and web version are both free), followed by Fitbit (only available in their free app, no web version), MyFitnessPal (app and web version are both free - you have to pay attention when you select from the database as user-submitted items are not vetted), and MyMacros+ (app version is free, but web version is part of their premium package).

On the disadvantages side, food tracking does add time to your meal planning, especially at first when you're learning how to meal plan to hit nutrition goals. If you struggle with perfectionism, or have a history with disordered eating, it can become unhealthy for your mental/emotional state, and working with an appropriate professional to moderate your meal planning strategies without taking it to unhealthy extremes is important.

The overall goal of good nutrition is to feel your best, after all, no matter which specific goals you've chosen for yourself in order to move in that direction. If tracking your food helps you in your quest for better health, do it. If it pulls you further away, then set goals for which progress can be better measured in a way other than food journaling.