How to use the Food Journal

Hello beautiful beings,

A Food Journal is one of the best tools to start of your Intuitive Eating journey. It enables you to actually be the researcher of your own body. It teaches us to become aware of how our food affects us.

**Warning: Sometimes we need to take other steps in healing our relationship with food, before starting our journey towards Intuitive Eating. If you find yourself already focussing on food and what you eat all the time, a Food Journal might not be the best thing for you to start with. First we need to allow ourselves and let go of the mental restrictions we have put on ourselves, before taking this next step!

What do you write down in a food journal

Although there are many different things you can write down when it comes to learning about your body and food, I prefer to keep it simple and available. I understand that when it seems like too much work, it is very unlikely most of us will give the practise a shot.

In the Food Journal of Living Lightly we focus on three main questions for every meal: 

-      What did you eat?

-      When did you eat?

-      How did you feel after?

We want to write down every time about 20/30 minutes after we have eaten, how it made us feel.

This is the practise to become more aware of our bodies ques and wisdom.

It will let us know if the food has fuelled us or made us feel tired.

If it felt heavy or light on the stomach.

If we felt satisfied or kept thinking about the next dish after.

If we had a bad taste in our mouth after or not. 

This journal is the tool to bring our body and mind together. To use our body as the material for the research and to let our mind to the analytics. 

Although you can look at the results every single day, I would advise you to take a moment at the end of the week and analyse which foods were working for you and which were not.

Of course the response of your body is not only due to the food we consume, but since we are checking in just after the meal, we can compare the feeling before and after. It is therefore that we can find some wisdom with how the food affected us. We may also take a moment to think about the place/timing/feeling while eating may have affected us. Perhaps we were really stressed and is that the reason we were not feeling too well after the meal. Or perhaps the location we were in was not comfortable for us. 

For how long should I keep the Food Journal?

Although we can keep the practise up and journal our food every day, just trying it out for about one week or five days can be an amazing enlightening thing.

The journal can help us to understand more about our bodies needs and cravings and how we can respond to these in the most beneficial ways.

You can download and print the Living Lightly Food Journal for FREE or create your own on any piece of paper or within any kind of notebook.

Where to keep your food journal?

I would advise you to place the journal near by the place where you eat or in the kitchen. You can set a timer on your phone in the beginning, just to make sure you keep up with the practise. 

I am excited to hear about your experiences with the Food Journal and what you have learned about your body and its response to the food you eat!

Another amazing tool to use in your Intuitive Eating journey, is the Hunger Spectrum tracker.

Lots of love from my heart to yours!