Tips and do's and do nots for keeping a food diary.
Hi, im new to the forums. Originally I was going to save this question for later, but I figiured i'd do so now to get it over with.
Over the last fe weeks i've been keeping a food diary and writing in it every now and then. So far I have mostly limited my entry's into writing in it to eating sweets esspecially binge eating.
Lately i've been counting the amount of money I spend and adding it up(since 3/8/2026 when I started recording the cost of eating sweets) as a means of keeping track things.
That said I wanted to know if anyone has tips on the do's and do not's with regards to keeping a food diary.
Hii
. Welcome to the community! How smart to keep track of the money. I would think that seeing how much you could save if you avoided sweets would be great incentive to cut back.
Successful journaling tends to be very individualized. What works for one person won't always work for another.
For instance, I am most successful when I keep it simple. I record the foods I've eaten after the meal or snack and guess at the amounts. Then I write the calories down at the end of the day and tally them up. I try to do better then next day. I obsess if I count exact calories as I go.
Others find that precisely planning the meals or snacks and recording them all before eating it helps. Still others keep food diaries that are entirely mood-based. They record how they felt when they ate, whether they were truly hungry in that moment and whether the food they ate was healthy.
Nutrionalists often recommend that you record what you ate, how much you ate and your emotions in that moment to better understand your eating habits. Hopefully others will chime in here with their own experiences. Is this your first attempt at a food diary? - Lori (Team Member)Thanks a million. The idea of writing how I feel should be a step in a right direction.
