My 30-Day Tracking challenge is over and yes, I was methodical and religious about tracking my food intake for the past 30 days.  Using the Livestrong website was really easy, their database of foods in ginormous and once I got in the swing of it I enjoyed the ritual of logging what I ate.

My goal for this challenge was not about a diet.  I wanted to clean up my act, drop some bad habits and incorporate better, more nutritional foods in my daily diet.  Sure I indulged and there are a few days I cringed at what I logged.  Other days I would have been proud to post my entire days’ worth of food on Facebook for all to see!

I learned a lot during this challenge.  Being brutally honest with what one eats and drinks is not always pretty. You start to notice trends, both good and bad, after a week or so and you can choose to ignore them or choose to make changes but at least you know what’s what.  Here’s a quick recap.

• I really do eat a lot of fiber, a lot of fruits and lots of veggies.
• I made a point to measure my food to make sure I was entering the proper portions
• Logging my lunch as I made it, rather than after I ate it helped me ‘edit’ what I put in there.
• I chose foods and snacks (for the most part) based on nutritional value rather than just popping chips down my throat as I worked or watched tv.
• I (puffy heart) watching the virtual water glass fill up and splash over the rim when I met my water goal (props to Livestrong for this fun visual).
• I ate “in” more often because it’s easier to track the food I cook.
• I had to really focus on hunger versus other triggers such as boredom or emotional eating.  This was probably my biggest challenge.  I’m an “eat when I’m happy, eat when I’m sad, eat when I’m bored”  kind of gal!
• Alcohol calories add up VERY quickly and with that often comes some less than stellar eating habits.

So that’s my month in a nutshell.  For those of you wondering, yes, I did lose a few pounds.  I don’t weigh myself but I have my “test” pants that I tried on every week.  It took about 3 weeks of tracking before I noticed any changes.

Studies show that tracking what you eat will help you shed pounds and I figure it’s mostly because if you are tracking what you eat, you’re more apt to make better choices.  Unless it’s Saturday night and you just opened up a nice bottle of wine!  Or maybe that’s just me!

Now go run!

Keli 🙂

PS – If you joined me in the challenge, let me know how you did!