Keeping a journal can help you learn a lot about yourself in terms of what you eat, how much you exercise and why you engage in various activities.
Journaling the meals that you eat helps you to avoid "unconscious eating" - eating that leads to consumption of excess calories, beyond what you may have ever intended to consume. In fact, research actually shows that keeping a food journal will help you lose weight! In addition, journaling your meals will help you keep the weight off once it's gone. Use the My Plan section of your Support In Motion page to log your meals, then view a complete nutritional breakdown of the foods you've eaten each day - including calories, protein, carbohydrates, fat and more.
In addition to keeping track of your foods, journaling your moods, such as stress, boredom or anger, can help you pinpoint problem areas during your day, which in some cases may serve as triggers to overeating. Once you understand the problem, you can find a solution that does not involve opening the box of cookies or the jar of jellybeans.
And last but certainly not least, remember to log your exercise. The more often you log your exercise, the clearer it will be to see how exercise affects the bottom line when it comes to weight loss. Remember to view the Daily Nutrition Score in the My Plan section to see the net result of the food and exercise events that you've logged.
