There’s many rea­sons to track your nutri­tion and main­tain a food log. Are you work­ing out, but not see­ing changes? Do you sus­pect food aller­gies or a gluten intol­er­ance? Do you sus­pect emo­tional eat­ing? Do you have health issues, such as high cho­les­terol or high blood pres­sure? What­ever your rea­sons, main­tain­ing a healthy weight and avoid­ing foods that are detri­men­tal to your health will help you live a hap­pier, health­ier life.

Keep­ing track of food consump­tion will help you see the num­ber of calo­ries that you’re con­sum­ing each day, and it will also tell you if you’re eat­ing enough veg­eta­bles, fruits, and whole grains, which are essen­tial to a healthy diet. Keep­ing track of solid fats, oils, and desserts will help you deter­mine if you’re eat­ing too many of these foods.

There are sev­eral web­sites and apps that can help you keep track. Review our quick tuto­r­ial at the end of this post to learn how you can track nutri­tion based on guide­lines from ChooseMyPlate.gov.

Poor Eat­ing Habits Can Lead to Health Risks

Accord­ing to an NCHS brief from the Cen­ters of Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion, Jan­u­ary 2012, more than one-third of U.S. adults (35.7%) are obese. Also, the num­ber of over­weight chil­dren in the U.S. is grow­ing, with 1 out of 3 chil­dren now con­sid­ered over­weight or obese. If you have a body mass index (BMI) of 25 or more, you may be con­sid­ered over­weight or obese. Visit the Cen­ters of Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion web­site [ Assess­ing BMI ] for more infor­ma­tion about BMI. Not main­tain­ing a healthy weight puts you at risk for many con­di­tions — such as heart dis­ease, stroke, and type 2 diabetes.

Under­stand­ing Your Rela­tion­ship With Food

Food is used for sev­eral rea­sons — not just to sat­isfy hunger. At times, there might be psy­cho­log­i­cal rea­sons, instead of phys­i­cal rea­sons that lead to over-consumption. Food is used dur­ing cel­e­bra­tions such as birth­day par­ties or wed­dings. Rela­tion­ships, loca­tions, and moods can affect your eat­ing and drink­ing habits. For exam­ple, if you’ve had a stress­ful day at work, you might indulge in an extra glass of wine, or if you’re at the movies you feel oblig­ated to eat the but­tered pop­corn. Keep­ing a diary of your food will help you iden­tify the trig­gers that lead to poor eat­ing habits.

Find­ing Your Allergy Triggers

Keep­ing track of foods that trig­ger your aller­gies can be a valu­able tool. Some aller­gies are extreme and are obvi­ous, but oth­ers may require some fur­ther inves­ti­ga­tion. When you keep track, you can cor­re­late symp­toms such as wheez­ing, nasal con­ges­tion, rashes, and nau­sea with the foods or drinks that you con­sume. Of course, if you suf­fer from aller­gies, any changes in your diet should be dis­cussed with an allergist.

Improv­ing Body Image

Your body image is how you feel about your phys­i­cal self. If there are things that you want to change about your body (i.e., you’re not within the accepted BMI rec­om­men­da­tions), you can put together a plan in con­junc­tion with a nutri­tion­ist or a gen­eral prac­ti­tioner to reach those goals. Make sure those goals are real­is­tic for your body type. Track­ing your progress and reach­ing these goals can boost your self-esteem and your body image.

Com­bat­ing Unfair Per­cep­tions of Obesity

In a study con­ducted by the Uni­ver­sity of Alabama, the per­cep­tion of peo­ple who are obese is very dif­fer­ent from those who are thin. For exam­ple, in the study those who were over­weight and rest­ing were asso­ci­ated with lazi­ness, while their thin coun­ter­parts were described as rest­ing. For more infor­ma­tion about the study, see Sci­ence Daily.

How Tech­nol­ogy Can Help

There are sev­eral tools that you can use to track exer­cise, weight, and nutri­tion. At LightAr­row, we’ve cre­ated Life­Topix, which enables you to track every­thing in your life — all in one place. It is very flex­i­ble — allow­ing you to build nutri­tion track­ing that’s tai­lored to your spe­cific needs. Take a look at the fol­low­ing tuto­r­ial to learn more.

Down­load Life­Topix: