Keep a Food Log

How has your week been? Hopefully you are enjoying our beautiful spring weather. We will soon "spring forward" and set our clocks ahead one hour for Daylight Savings Time this coming Sunday, which happens to be April Fools Day. I see a lot of potential for practical jokes.

Speaking of practical jokes, did you catch the Oscar telecast last Sunday? Among all the borrowed gowns and jewels, the perfectly coiffed hair and tanned, surgically enhanced bodies, we saw a lot of Oscar caliber performances that night and not just the clips from the movies. That was quite an act between Steve Martin and Danny Devito. Danny was sitting in the second row of the audience eating carrots until Steve brought him some dip. I enjoy watching the Oscars, but as the show got boring I started realizing that what we were seeing could be a microcosm of our current society.

Unfortunately, we are a society obsessed with appearances. Many of us are hung up on how successful we appear to be and how close we come to fitting an ideal shape and size. We borrow money and max out our credit cards so that we can drive the right car and wear the right clothes. If we need to appear more attractive and youthful, we rely on magic diets and skin creams and if that doesn't work, liposuction. The only difference between Hollywood actors and us is that they get paid to live this lifestyle. We on the other hand, go into debt to lead this lifestyle and often have trouble staying solvent. We ultimately have to pay the piper and when that happens we perform the Oscar-worthy role of a lifetime: we cast ourselves as the helpless soul.

We tell ourselves the two biggest lies on the Earth: "I can't save money" and "I can't lose weight." I have been there, done that. It took me years to learn this, but if we spend less money than we earn, we accumulate wealth. If we burn more calories than we consume, we lose weight and gain health. When I finally figured this out I was able to turn my life around. Before this happened I had to get past a million excuses that included the word "can't."

One tool that helped me delete "can't" from my vocabulary was keeping records of how much I ate and exercised. It was a lesson I learned from being a CPA: if there is no record, the event did not happen. I used to be able to fool myself into thinking that I was getting enough exercise and not eating too badly, until I started keeping a log. I would look at the log and realize that I needed to make changes. My nutrition was unbalanced: I was eating too much of some food groups and very little or none of fruits and vegetables. I either wasn't exercising enough or I was exercising inefficiently at too low an intensity. I soon solved the efficiency problem by using a heart rate monitor. I was now able to see objective data as to how intensely I was exercising. (I have had many clients tell me that using a heart rate monitor made a huge difference in their fitness level.)

Besides helping me adjust my exercise and nutrition, the log helped me stay motivated during plateaus. Anyone who has successfully lost weight will tell you that there will be a period of time when you are doing everything right and yet your weight does not budge. By looking at an accurate log of your exercise sessions, you will be able to track progress that is not readily apparent at the scale.

Once again, if we burn more calories than we consume, we lose weight. If you are struggling with your weight or are at a plateau, I strongly recommend that you start keeping a food log and an exercise log. It will turn "can't" into can.

"Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect."
-Ralph Waldo Emerson