Day 4 of Week 1 How To Create Your Food Diary

Weighed this morning: lost one pound
Total lost: 3 pounds

Today's challenge: celebrating my daughter's birthday without overeating. She's five today.

1/2 cup of oatmeal: 150
2 tsp of sugar:30
1/3 cup of 1% milk:36
cinnamon:0
coffee with 1 tbl of powder creamer: 30
sweet-n-low sweetner:0
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running total: 246

protein shake: 120
two large eggs:160
lefse:120
coffee with 1 Tbl of powdered creamer:30
also sweet-n-low sweetner
bits of the kids' food: 50 (estimate)
lunch total (460)
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Running total: 706

3 nilla wafers:45
frosting licks: 75
1 cup of tator tot hot dish: 400 (estimate)
salad with Dorthy Lynch dressing: 1 1/2 tsp 30 (est)
coffee (that Daddy Rainmaker spiked):45 (est.)
two bites of cake: 60 (est)
supper (625)

running total: 1331

Banana:60
1/2 cup of Blue Bunny Bunny Tracks lite icecream: 150

total:1541

fitness: 4 mile run

I will be posting my food intake throughout the day.


Oh. oatmeal is also good for kids.

How To Create Your Food Diary

Not only will you use your food diary to keep track of your calorie intake, but the way you create it will help you get more mileage and be more effective in your weight loss.

After I had Iris Anna, I only had 25 pounds to lose versus 40. But for some reason I spent two or three months struggling with gaining and losing the same five pounds.

Frustrated to the point of desperation combined with dogged determination, I revamped my food diary and it made all the difference.

Your food diary also needs to be your oasis amidst your struggle to lose weight. It needs to be a safe place for you to express your feelings, your struggles, your observations and your questions. You may feel sadness, deprivation, and even depression as you travel the road to regaining control of your eating.

Eating is habitual, emotional and almost lastly...having nothing to do with actual hunger. Is it any wonder we have a struggle with losing weight?

It was when I started confronting my habits, facing my emotions and questioning my actual hunger level in the safe confines of my food diary...did I start to see those five pounds stay off.

So, when you put together your food diary...pick out a notebook or a cozy journal that you feel relaxed and comfortable writing in.

But don't make it too nice...because the next thing you need to do to put in pictures that keep you focused.

There needs to be one picture of you in there with your current weight.

Next you need to find pictures of yourself looking the way you want to look. If you don't have those then find photos of maybe someone else you see in a magazie. I might even go so far as to paste your head on these photos.

The reason behind this...is that you need to start actually "seeing" yourself in a different way. You need to change the image in your mind that you have of your body. The more you see pictures of yourself the way you want to look...the more you will try to make that a reality. Over the next 10 weeks...you will look at those pictures...over and over again...they will become part of your vision...this is how you are "suppose" to look.

This really works.

The next thing you want to put in your journal is poetry that inspires you...even better... poetry that you've written about yourself that demonstrates the beauty of who you are.

Finally, you need to find a miniature calendar to put in your food diary, so that you can easily plot and strategize what weight you will be at such and such a date.

If you think this is silly, how can I know what I'll weigh in the future?...then you underestimate the science of how God created our bodies (that's another post).

Any time I have done this, I have averaged a two pound a week weight loss. That even allows for messing up from time to time.

That is why I can say, with confidence that I will lose 20 pounds in 10 weeks.