The Mind Body Project
The Mind Body Project
Healthy Huddle: Importance of Food Logging
We break down why food logging works like GPS: it shows your route, tracks detours, and helps you reach health goals without chasing fads. We share practical ways to log that fit real life and turn data into small, steady wins.
• choosing lifestyle over quick fixes
• food logging as a roadmap to goals
• apps, photos, and handwritten logs
• building awareness and catching BLTs
• using data as a tool, not identity
• setting goals for fat loss or muscle gain
• rerouting after setbacks without shame
• non-scale victories that validate progress
• periodic logging for maintenance
• seven-day logging challenge for clarity
Log your food for the next seven days using the app, photos, or notes—record everything and see what it reveals about your habits
Welcome to the Healthy Huddle. What is the Healthy Huddle? The Healthy Huddle is each week we'll pick up a we'll pick a topic, we'll talk about that topic and how that you can apply that to your healthy lifestyle. What do you do if you watch sports? When the team has a huddle, what are they doing? When they huddle, they are planning a game plan. What is the game plan for success? And that is simply what we're going to do here. We're going to huddle up. We're going to talk about a plan of action on different topics and how you can take that into your lifestyle and create a healthy lifestyle. We're not going to talk about quick diets. We're not going to talk about fads, diets. We're going to now we might use those as examples, but how do we live a healthy lifestyle? How do we implement these things we talk about into a healthy lifestyle? Because if it doesn't become part of your lifestyle, it's going to not last long. Because if something's to be successful, it will have to meet our lifestyle, be part of our lifestyle, part of our daily living, part of our weekly living, part of our yearly living, just part of us all the time. So we're going to discuss a bunch of different topics each week. So this week on our healthy huddle, we're going to talk about food logging. That is our roadmap to success. If you've ever gone anywhere recently in the last number of years, five years, what do you maybe longer, not sure, but what do you typically, if you it's never somewhere you've never been before, what do you do? Where do you plug in the address or the place in your GPS? Back in the day, before GPS, it used to be like MapQuest, where you type it in and it would print out, you could print out all the instructions on how to get there. But that's kind of what and your GPS, when you put it in there, it tells you how long it's gonna take you, what route to take, if you make any round turns, it's gonna take you from point A to point B in the most efficient manner and keep you up to date on new routes and all the things along the ways. And so food logging is no different. If we put in our GPS and we get there and somebody says, Well, how'd you get here? You pull up your GPS and say, Well, I I went here, then there, and then it rerouted me here and then there. But if you just get in your car and you know the address, but you have no idea how to get there, and what should have taken two hours takes 10 hours, and you get there and somebody says, How'd you get here? You go, I have no idea. I made a lot of turns, I yelled a lot of U turns, a lot of wrong turns. I have no idea how I got here. And when we want to make changes and we're not, we're at where we're at, and we go, How did we get here? I don't know. But a food log similar to our GPS, we can look back and go, Oh, I know exactly what I did because I can look back at my food log and I can follow that. I can say, oh man, today I had a really bad day. Ate too much or ate too little. It was a party that day. Look at all this junk food I had. We can look back and we're not shocked if we're in the wrong destination. How do we be shocked if we're in the wrong destination when we didn't put in our GPS? We just drove around and go, oh, here I am. So we're gonna talk about how vital that is, how food logging is our GPS. It is our roadmap to the goals we want. It shows our journey, it shows our path to where we want to go. And it's a way to keep record of that. There's so many ways to food log. I've been food logging for a lot of years. Uh, when I first started food logging, it was write everything down, look in this thick book. Uh it was probably this thick, probably that thick, maybe thicker. It was called the Calorie King. And you would have to go look up that food, and you could write down the carbs, proteins, calories, fats, sugar, all that. But you had to do that for every single food. And you know what happened if you had that food the next meal? You had to write it all down again. If you had that food the next day, you'd have to write it all down again. It's a lot of work. Now it's so much simpler. We have so many apps, and right here within this app, within in the M2B Fitness app, we have a food logging. It works, has a barcode, has well over two million different foods that you can enter. You can create recipes, you can create favorites, all these things. You can take pictures of your food. It has it's it's just a great way to keep track of your food. Now, when we talk about logging, typically think of what I just mentioned: writing it down, keeping a log of it. But again, what did I say in the beginning? It has to fit your lifestyle. And so we're gonna talk about things that fit your lifestyle. Maybe writing down, maybe typing it in and logging it doesn't fit your lifestyle. So, what maybe does fit your lifestyle? Maybe it's just taking a picture, maybe it's a picture of the food that you ate. And then you can so that way, because do we really remember what we had to eat eight days ago? No, I don't I couldn't tell you. Eight days ago, I don't even know what day it was. I don't even know what I could what I had to eat. But we can look back at our food log and go, oh, eight days ago on a Sunday afternoon, this is what I had. And it's a way to keep track of that, to know what we did. And so, and whether that's a picture, whether that's you wrote it down, whether that you put in the app, whatever it is, then they have a log of what you did. Now, when you take a picture, it may not be you don't know all the calories and all that, but you have an idea of like, man, I've gained a few pounds. Oh, let me go back and look at my pictures. Well, for the last week, I've been on vacation, or I've eaten out for meetings, or I wasn't home till late to eat dinner, I had a few too many drinks over the weekend, then you can start seeing that. Oh, that started to add up. Another thing is what food logging does is it starts to build awareness. Because don't we sometimes just mindlessly eat or we go, uh, you know, I haven't eaten too bad. I had, oh, I had that ice cream, oh, I had that, oh, I had two helpings of that. Then we realize, oh wow, maybe I wasn't so good at my nutrition. But it helps build awareness because what happens if you have to log something, whether it's writing it down, whether it's putting in the app, whether it's taking a picture, you start to think about it. It's not a quick, oh, should I really have that? Or, oh, I hate to uh actually log that. But if we're honest, it helps build awareness of what we are doing. Then, you know, it also food logging, it becomes awareness, but it also when we when we put it in there, whether we log it, however we log it, log what fits your lifestyle. But it becomes data, it becomes data as a tool for change. It's kind of like the scale. The scale, so many times, it's the end all be all. Whatever that number said, that is who we are. Man, I've been just doing great on my exercise, my diet. I get on the scale, it hasn't gone anywhere. I gained a pound. How does that make your day go? I might as well not even bother. I'm so I've been working so hard, and this is what happens. Or we've been doing not so great on our food, we've been exercising okay, we go on the scale, we lost two pounds. All right, and I can keep doing that. I can keep not exercising so much, not eating so good. But that's still gonna catch up with us. So, but the scale is just a tool. It's a tool to gauge. It doesn't, that tool doesn't tell us who we are. If we use a hammer and we hammer a nail, is that we can't build a house with that hammer. Is that hammer saying you're a horrible person? You're a horrible in carpenter. No, it's just a tool. That's all it is. It's a tool to be used for what you need it to. Maybe it's to hammer and and build a house. Maybe it's to hammer a little nail to hang a picture. Maybe it's a hammer to smack a bug. That hammer is just a tool. And the same thing is true with the scale, it's just a tool to keep data for change. And the same thing is with food log. It is a tool. We use it so we can gather data and see how do we need to change. We can look at our roadmap and say, what needs to change here? It's just a tool that we have in our tool toolbox, whether it's a scale, whether it's the you know, our weight scale, maybe it's a food scale, that's a tool. Maybe it's a logging the the app, it's a scale, it's a tool. Within the app, too, you can take progress pictures. Again, it's a tool. You can put measurements again, it's a tool to gather data. So use it as a tool to gather data, a data tool for change. Um also, it's a great way to set goals and track progress. Because maybe we want to we maybe we have a goal of building muscle. Okay, then here's the macros I need. I mean, here's the calories I need. Maybe it's a goal of losing losing fat. Not losing weight, but losing fat. There's a difference between losing fat and losing weight. Losing weight is everything. Muscle mass, fat, everything. Whatever numbers on the scale is weight loss. Maybe it's to lose fat. Maybe I want to actually gain some pounds of muscle, but re reduce my fat. All those have different caloric intakes, all those have different macro makeups. So we have to use food logging to be able to manage our goals. How do we, what is our goal and how do we track our progress towards that goal? Because it has to be trackable. It has to be, you know, when we how can we get upset when we don't reach our destination? We never set a goal to get there. We can't track our progress. When you put it in GPS, you're setting a goal of I want to go from point A, where I'm currently at, to point B. I track my progress because I can see it says turn here, turn there, go two stoplights down, turn right. It it tells me my progress as I get closer to the goal. Doesn't it tell us when we start? This is how much time you have until you get there. And as we get closer to that goal, our destination, doesn't that time start to tick down? Yes, it does. So food logging is no different. We set our goal and we use it, that tool, to track our progress to get us towards our goal. And then, too, we can also, just like GPS, if you're going down a route and there's construction, it'll reroute you. You take a wrong turn, what does it do? It reroute you. Your your route may have not been the one that was originally set when you put it in the GPS, but the GPS will reroute you. Maybe it's heavy traffic, so it'll reroute you around that. Maybe there's construction, it rerouts you. Maybe you made a mistake, you took a wrong turn, it reroutes you. Food logging is no different. If you're going along and you make a wrong turn, you have a bad day, and you just eat everything under the sun, it will reroute you. It will go, okay, here's a new day. We're gonna log food. It's a new day. What can I do today to make it a little bit better than yesterday? And it keeps rerouting. But when we reroute, we get to the final destination of our goal. Just like our GPS, when we get rerouted, does it take longer sometimes than the estimated time when we start? Yeah. But we still got there in one piece. The same is true. We may have set a goal, and whether it's time, whatever it may be, we still get there. It may have just taken a little bit longer because we had some wrong turns. We had to be rerouted. That happens, and that's what it is for. And two, when it comes to tools, we also have to celebrate those non-scale victories. What are those? Sometimes it's clothes just feeling a little looser. Maybe it's more energy. Maybe it's some of your uh blood work going getting better. Maybe it's getting off more, getting off some meds that you were on. Those are some non-scale victories. Again, those are tools. Those are tools. Are we making progress? Along with, and and those things you can, blood pressure and all that, you can also put in the app. There's a lot of ways to track your progress. And again, it goes back to your goals. What is your goal? Maybe it's not to lose weight, maybe it's not to gain muscle, maybe it's just to make have better results in your blood work. Maybe it's to get off some medication. Those are huge non-scale victories. Those are our life-changing victories. So we set our goal, we were able to track our progress through a whole different array of ways within the app. And also it's just food logging is really about accountability. It's about saying I ate this and I put it in the app. I ate this, I took a picture of it, I wrote it down, whatever it is. And it's also motivation. Isn't motivation when we hit our goal and we're able to look it back at the at the progress and go, you know, oh wow, I can really see how eating good over time really made a difference. I used to have a uh when I was on my weight loss journey, and my closet had a big poster board over my door in my closet. It had my weight and it had a chart. And so I could see it go down. But you know, it didn't, it wasn't straight down. As what it was was down, come up a little bit, down, come up a little bit, down, come up a little bit. Sometimes we had some down, down, down, come up a little bit, down. But is what happened over time is it started here, but even with the ups and downs in between, it ended here. And why is that? Because there was a goal set and there were progress made because I could see, you know, when I had those ups, I thought, oh man, this is awful. But when I look at the big picture, I could see that those little ups were just little blips. But overall, it started here and we were still making progress going down. So that's pretty motivating. And when you can enter those stats and those things in the app, you can see those and you can see that progress. And that is that's a way of logging. And we're talking about food logging today, but it's also a way of logging your successes. Logging, maybe it's just writing it in the notes, you know, how you're feeling that day, what you ate, what it means. And also with that logging, it keeps us honest, doesn't it? Because uh we we talk about BLTs, bites, licks, and tastes. There's actually a master class on here talking about BLTs. Bites, licks, and tastes. Those are all those things that we take in that we don't ever really account for. I just had a small little bite of peanut butter. I just had like a pinch of dessert. I just tried it. I just, you know, got a spoonful while I was cooking supper to see what that was, how it tasted. But all of those add up. And when we're honest with ourselves and we add those, or we say, I'm not gonna do that because I really don't want to take the energy to add one bite of something. So I'm just not gonna take it. So it helps us hold us accountable and it keeps us, it keeps us honest with ourselves. And then too, that way we don't go, I don't know what I did wrong. And then we can see that progress over time. When we see progress, it is motivating because sometimes when we have those ups and downs, we don't we let that upset us or get irritated us. And so it kind of can stall out motivation, it can stall out progress. And you know, we just have a lot of different ways that we can log food, and I and I've shared with those with you. What is the most important thing? The most important thing is to log it that fits your lifestyle. If that's a picture, do it. If that's handwriting it out, do it. If it's putting in the app, do it. Whatever is gonna fit your lifestyle, then do it. Does that mean you have to food log forever? No, it doesn't. If you have a goal, you need to be food logging. And sometimes we just need to food log periodically to say, hey, where am I at? What does my food look like? And you'll notice within a two to three week period, if you food log every day for a two to three week period, four-week period, you'll notice that you can you eat the same things over and over in that period of time. Now, maybe not every day, but in that period of time, you'll see a repetitiveness of the food you intake. And so that'll kind of give you a general idea of your diet. And when I say diet, I mean your general food intake. So, with that, you can then make changes as you need to. Go, whether it's your blood work, you want to get better, maybe it's you want to lose some weight, you want to lose some fat, you want to gain some muscle. You can take all that and go, okay, what can I do with this information? Because it's data. And then you can set your goals and then refine it. And then when you hit that goal, you go, I'm just gonna maintain. And then if it starts getting out of hand, you can log again. Maybe it's just good to periodically log, say, okay, am I still on track? Am I still going in the right way, right direction? So I challenge you for if you haven't, for the next seven days, log your food. Log within the app. You can take pictures, you can actually log it or write it down, whatever it is that fits your lifestyle for the next seven days. Log your food and see if there's any shocking revelations that come out of that logging. And be honest and record everything and see what results it has and what it says to you about your eating, about your lifestyle. And then you can go from there. So, thank you so much for joining me this week on the healthy huddle. I'm looking forward to seeing you right here next time in the huddle for the healthy huddle.