5 things I learnt from keeping a food journal

Now more than ever, habits matter, to give us a sense of purpose, of normalcy.

It is otherwise hard, not to be sucked into the blur that is time. Right now, because it is slow. But in normal times, because it is fast.

To give one such blur a name, I spent the whole of 2019 recording my every move and this is what I learnt.

1. That I am capable of developing a habit

By now, I had realized something. That I was capable of going to the gym consistently and eating good meals throughout the week but was somehow just not getting around to doing it. Trying not to think about why only reinforced this apparent inability for no reason other than to simply favour procrastination. So I asked myself if I absolutely had to do it, how would I do it?

So I began like I would any other problem at work, on a spreadsheet. Plus, you know, because data-driven decision making is all the rage now.

2. Consistency is key! In greens, and in cheesecakes too

Someone once told me, fewer the numbers in your analysis, the better you are telling your story.

So I asked myself, what are the 3 things I want to know. How well I ate, how well I exercised, and if this had any impact on my weight. So, that’s what I did.

Ha, because it’s my spreadsheet, I can give cute names to my “KPIs”.

What I didn’t expect is the consistency in my scores. And while they might seem so, they are not too flaky. They come with a well-defined set of rules. Ahem.

To measure how well I ate, I scored each of my 3 meals, “snacking” and water intake. Measuring exercise was tricky because I wanted to include many different elements, small and big. I set move minutes goal on my Google Fit to 120 minutes every day. This I usually covered to and fro from work, so I needed a dedicated workout hour to cover. Doing both of these every day meant a perfect score.

Being consistent throughout the year in each one of these elements meant I did something right.

P.S. Ok ok, my Ass Score dipped once because I was sick and then again, during holidays :(

3. Pause and reflect. Makes all the difference

So I scored every meal from 1 to 5, 5 being the best score.

What even is the difference between a 4-rated meal and one with a perfect 5? For me, it was portion control. For someone else, it might be having greens in every meal or protein in every meal. When I started to get 4s over many weeks, I paused to think, why? Where’s my perfect 5? So the extra serving became dearer. But the best part about playing by your own rules is you can cut yourself some slack sometimes, and you must. If I had a hard day, despite no portion control, I’d give myself a 5, because why not?

But my point is, over a period you start to identify these patterns, some inconsequential and some others that need to be acted upon.

For example, once winter started, my water consumption took a hit which I guess is natural.

Otherwise, I always ate a big healthy lunch, and good enough dinners but who fed me all those croissants and chocolate cereals for breakfast?! Me, myself and I. Boom.

So that needs fixing.

4. Recognizing that I cannot do it all, and it’s okay

You cannot do it all, and that’s okay. The sooner I accepted that, the easier it was to do what is feasible with more dedication.

To maintain the ass score I had to work out at least 4 times a week regardless of what it is. So, I juggled. This meant that on some days, I could make up for 1 hour at the gym with half an hour of running or 15 minutes of HIIT. At some point, I needed to incorporate Suryanamaskar into my routine apart from actual workouts. Damn you, PCODs. And so, I told myself I should get bonus points every time I go above and beyond! Greedy, I know. But this was good motivation.

When I couldn’t go out or was sick and had zero minutes clocked, I still had the chance to gain 50 points if I simply did 5 repetitions of Suryanamaskar. Some days I did this with planks. Now, when I zoom out, this diversification made all the difference. It kept me consistent, I did not feel like giving up and I ended up reaping benefits of different kinds of activity.

5. Not having to live up to any expectations is effective

One thing to ask myself was this — what is it that I can do when nobody is watching, when I make my own rules, when my stats are only relative to myself, when I don’t have fitness apps reminding me to work out, when I am not accountable to anyone except myself — what is it that I can achieve?

Not having to live up to any expectations, others or my own, not setting any specific goals, was FUN and effective for me. I did not begin wanting to lose any number of kgs in any weeks or to run a 5K. I just wanted to keep my line graphs from falling off a cliff, no matter what that meant.

Sure results matter, but who says all races have to be timed? Let’s all just get to the finish line in our own way.

But, having said that, habits that I had to consciously enforce are now inherent. Notifications go off in my head that I don’t have to snooze anymore.

And hell, I have never before kept up a habit for 365 days, that too on a spreadsheet, so I’m going to take that win!