Improve Your Health by Keeping a Daily Food Journal

Before any of us can improve our daily consumption habits, we need to understand what our habits really are. You might know that you drink too much coffee or that you have unhealthy snacks occasionally, but do you know how much of those items you consume on a regular basis? In addition to what you want to cut back on in your diet, you also want to know if you are lacking healthy foods that will give you all the nutrients and vitamins that your body needs.

Some people just think that they can take a multi-vitamin and they will be good to go. While vitamins can help you to acquire some of the good things that your body requires, they can not do it all. Some vitamins and supplements are better quality than others, meaning that your body can more easily absorb and utilize the ingredients in those products.

The problem is that some vitamins and supplements are produced in combinations that do not allow your body to absorb them readily. Even if we consider only higher quality supplements. We still must realize that it is impossible for those supplements to work the same for everybody. The human body is just too complex. What works well for one person, may not help another person at all.

So what should you do? Well we need to realize that the best approach is to eat a well balanced diet. Our bodies will almost always absorb nutrients better when we consume them from natural sources that have not been altered through processing. Try to eat as many fresh foods as possible. Processing can help food to last longer, but it rarely adds to nutritional value. In fact the additives and processing that many of our foods undergo can add many unnatural and unhealthy ingredients. By recording our daily food intake, we can more easily monitor whether or not we are consuming too many processed foods.

Some foods do require some processing, such as wheat, before we can eat them. That is not a usually huge problem and we work with that, unless of course you are allergic to wheat products. However, we should try to avoid processed foods whenever possible.

Keeping a daily food journal is a good way to track your daily consumption because it will allow you to spot patterns that may be contributing to your intake deficiencies. In addition, if you have any food allergies or sensitivities, you may recognize patterns that emerge when you eat those foods. This alone is a good enough reason to keep a daily food journal. If you suffer from migraines or other health issues that are often triggered by certain foods you may be able to modify your diet and see positive changes in your health.

If you have never kept a daily food journal I would highly recommend trying it for at least 2 to 3 weeks. It is a great way to learn about habits that may be making you ill or adding to your waistline. You can just purchase a cheap spiral notebook and get right to it. It could very well be more beneficial than you think.
Source: http://www.profoundarticles.com/articledetail.php?artid=63283&catid=720
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