Food Journal - Week One

In university I took a course called, "Right to Food."  For one assignment we had to write down everything we ate for 3 days and calculate all of the nutrients, calories, and costs for each item.  It took me forever to get 3 consecutive days that I wasn't completely embarassed to hand in.  Cookies for breakfast?  Beer for lunch?  3 cans of coke in a day?  It really made me think about what I was putting in my body, and what I was getting from it, and I made changes.  I cut out pop completely, and it wasn't long after that that I became a vegetarian. 

Over the years, some bad habits have crept back in, and it's never more apparent than over the holidays and other busy, stressful times.  So with a stressful, busy week of work coming right after the holidays, I welcomed Amanda's suggestion to do a month long food journal in January.

A look back at this week has drawn no surprises when it comes to food.  I know that my holiday eating habits went from bad to worse, and this week I was just making my way through the leftovers.  I also recorded my daily exercise (30 minutes+, 6 days out of 7), my hours spent working, and my wake up and bed times along with some notes on how I felt at different times throughout the day. 

One thing that did surprise me is that I went to bed feeling hungry a couple of nights.  I think that knowing that I was writing everything down (and appalled at what I saw on the page for the rest of the day) kept me from snacking on more sweets in the evening.  So rather than not going for a bowl of ice cream while watching tv, I just didn't have anything, and then felt hungry.  This week I'm going to try some post-dinner fruit to quash the sweet craving and stop the hunger.

Once I got rid of the leftovers in the kitchen, I headed out of town for work, so my food options have been different than normal and my sleep patterns have been wonky.  I stay away until Wednesday of next week, so the sleeping thing has to get under control - soon!  That is my focus for the coming week.