Introduction To Health Journaling

To Fail is Not Failing, But Learning There Must Be Another Way

I have made many attempts in the past with this theory, none of which worked. From Fat camp to mother interference, it always ended the same way. At first, I would just forget to jot down a day or two. Then, I'd forget to have it on me. And eventually, I just wouldn't care enough and thought it was unimportant anyway. Not one person I have know has done it and succeeded. Usually I hear great things in the beginning of the process, but there was the inevitable repugnance for the entire exercise in meticulous note taking. The discipline required was just too much effort, especially when no one else had to do it and mocked your efforts. 

There's this nutritionist back in New York who kept chiding me to keep a food diary. Constantly, she would tell me to write down the food I was eating, the times I ate, the quantities, and the calories of every little wisp of air that passed my lips to live on my hips. I can honestly say I like the lady doctor very much. In fact, when I'm States Side again, I am heading to her office with specific questions on portions and a good calories counter/pedometer she can recommend. However I cannot say that the constant counsel was helpful to me in the slightest. Keeping track of what I ate only made me more self conscious about eating anything at all. Obsessing over food is not the right path, especially for me - the over-thinker of eating of my generation!

The notion though, was spot on. It is useful, but the methods I have seen in the past have been a short term solution (they also never worked and most of my friends would go ape shit). I've engineered my own strain of the food diary disease, one that actually works for me.

For Those Of You Playing The Home Game . . .

What exactly is a food diary, Ashley?

Well, if you are not someone who has been fighting the flubber since childhood then you might need some answers. Having a food diary means that you log what you eat & when you eat it. No matter what it is or how small it was, you must be honest and put it in the book. However, most people that keep food diaries quit after a few days. Why? Because it is tedious and annoying, and people look at you funny. It took me years to finally just do it. The way I keep track now is completely different then how I was taught in the past. The method I wholeheartedly recommend is still a bit tedious, there is no escaping that. I write out exactly what I eat and drink, the time at which it is consumed, and the correct quantity (be it grams/oz, serving size, or number of slices). The distinction from all my previous attempts is that I document any and all activity as well. If I workout at the gym, I write every detail of the exercises and machines used. If I go for a walk, I write down the time and level of intensity. The lower the intensity, the longer the walk. By writing down both the ingestion and execution of calories, I can accurately keep track of my progress. I can see if I need to eat more of a certain items (vitamin, mineral, or food group), or if I need to increase my activity, or be more wary of my injuries. I can document rest days, and not so good choices of food days, and feel no guilt or shame about it. If I want faster results, I have to be more active not eat less. If I am injured or sick and cannot be as spry as I would like, then I have to be wary of how many calories I intake versus my output.

For example, if I cannot stand up cause my foot is swollen and I have to lay down and rest 80% of the day...Maybe I shouldn't eat Doritos and candy instead of actual foods. Or, for instance, if I have been to the gym for 10 solid days in a row and worked extremely hard, then having that slice of cake won't be the end of the world. 

 

To go from this ^. . . To This V

Also, let's call it something other than a food diary. Any more food obsessed and it would be a groupie! Hmm...How about Health Journal-ing instead, since you will be writing down fitness and cuisine together?

Health Journal Keeping 101 

Step 1 : Gathering Your Materials

You need to make a measuring blueprint to record your progress over the next (insert number of weeks or months). You can make one of excel, but I always like making it by hand. Gives you a feeling of accomplishment if you not only make it by hand, but plug in the changing numbers each month. For your health journal you will need the following items:

• A Journal or Book 
• Pencil and multicolored pens
• Skinny Markers ( I picked crayola, but you don't have to)
• A Soft Measuring Tape (comes in any sewing kit)
• A Digital / Polaroid Camera (To take a BEFORE and AFTER shot)
  

Step 2 : Set Up The Journal

Once you have everything you'll need to get started, it is time to build your book! Making the following pages in your health journal will keep you focused on you - not the food, not the diet, and not any other person's opinion.

• Page 1 - Progress Chart (Make a chart to measure yourself and weigh yourself monthly by)
• Page 2 - Key (colors=?, will each month be a different color?, workout intensity?)
• Page 3 - Medication Section (daily meds, multivitamins, sick meds/anti-biotic) *Might want to put that down on each day that you take them to keep track
• Somewhere Inside - Goal Sheet (write out a set of goals for yourself, be they fitness related or visual related)
• Somewhere Inside - Inspirational Quotes (thrown in anywhere in the book, to keep you from quitting)
• Last Page - Out Comes (Did you reach your goal? What did you learn during this process? What goals do you have now?)

Step 3 : Start with Honesty

The most important thing about keeping a health journal, is the keeping it. You have to be honest, you have to write out everything, or it will not help you in the slightest. Be accountable to those pages, not to someone else. Put the truth down in the book, every drink and every crumb! If you are not feeling well, write that down too. (If you are a girl, you might even start keeping track of that monthly annoyance - it not only affects your mood and makes you bloat, but it can affect your food choices. If you are a guy, you might want to keep track of your mood cycle - men have the same kind of monthly mood swings, just without the leech lunch rush.) By being honest within the confines of this book you will start to notice the following:

• Your Eating Pattern & Time Frame
• The Lack or Excess of Certain Foods or Vitamins in Your Diet
• A Connection Between Your Mood, Your Schedule, and The Foods You Choose

For those days I'm lazy!

If you want any benefit at all from this method, you MUST stick with it! You should have it on you at all times, ready to write everything down the minute it happens. Also keep some water on you! Anytime you go to write, take a sip! It'll keep you hydrated and you can make sure that you never just eat when you are bored! If you get bored, instead of reaching for the candy bag maybe go for a walk? No, seriously! We all might want to eat when there is nothing else to do but there is a whole world outside that kitchen! Get outside, get active, and soak up that sun before winter comes home! 
If you have no injuries to speak of, unlike your blogger over here, get your skinny ass up and shaking it off!!

 I hope you enjoy this new method of fitness secretary-ing and please feel free to pass it on it the method helps!

Bye For Now xxx

The Hunter and Gatherer Diet... A.K.A. Life before Agriculture

Imagination is the key to life. 

We use it throughout our lives to create the world around us, as well as other worlds to escape from this one. As children, this plane call imagination is more fertile and abundant with life and love, and ideas that could change the world. Actors and writers use their imaginations and empathy to envision the worlds of the past, to bring truth and life to times that have past. A question that has always tugged at me was finally answered by one of my old acting tutors not too long ago: How can we engage the past in a more poignant way, a way that our audiences can see as well as feel?

“What did they eat? What did they hear around them in every space they passed through everyday? What did they see everyday, and not everyday? What historically was happening in their town/city/life around them? Answer these, yes. That is important. But more so is committing to it. Make the food they would eat, and only eat their dietary restraints for 2 weeks. Create their space as best you can, and immerse yourself in their home, their town, and their country. Listen to their music, read things they would read, try some of their chores, and hobbies, and maybe their job a little. There is a difference between method acting and The Method you know. Method acting can help you find the honest details of the world of the play and the characters in that world. The Method is losing who you are, as both an actor and a person, to create someone completely new to live in your body…its like inviting schizophrenia into you.” 

Now I know this is specifically an acting exercise, but I was wondering how I could use it for this blog and for life. I mean, in the fifties they ate things with real butter, high in sugar and saturated fats, but their portion control was excellent. And so different were the 1800s on foods in general. But what about hunters and gatherer from before humans decided to grow their food and cage live stock? That idea has become so relevant for me lately. Not many people can use the earth to feed them anymore.

Do you know the difference, just on sight, on what plants you could eat in a forest and which would kill you instantly?

 Do you know how to purify water, make shelter, start a fire, make a kill, clean it, and cook it without a kitchen to help you? Most people say, nope. And why shouldn’t they, when the Internet has become more common than pickup a book at the public library, or renting a video and the local Blockbuster. But what happens if there is a catastrophe, or an apocalypse, or another war that hits home? How would you survive at all, if you cannot trust the Earth around you to help shelter and feed you? I honestly believe people should have to learn how to hunt, how to gather, how to survive and live out in the forest for days without a radio, cell phone, or computer.

But enough of my pre-tech ranting, for now. What would these pre-agriculture people eat? Well, it is in their name: what they could hunt and gather. Fruits, nuts, berries, plants, bark, and vegetables found in nature with no growth hormones. They would have to set traps for small animals, make nets and poles for fishing, and weapons to hunt bigger game as well as cut and clean them for cooking and other things.

The Cave Man Diet Food Pyramid

So I decided to try something. I know I cannot just bolt into the woods, hoping I could try my hand at hunting and gathering alone without studying up a bit, but I want to try making a few meals the way our ancestors had to. For this next week, I will be making simple breakfasts, no special kitchen tricks or spices, that someone could easily have had before agriculture/when agriculture was just starting out.

Today’s breakfast, you ask?

1 large green apple

1 small nectarine

1 small kiwi

1 small handful of walnuts and almonds (roughly ¼ cup, I think)

and 1 very small chunk of goat cheese (the history of cheese).

Satisfying, filling, healthy, and cheap. I have to admit that these people were very smart survivalists. The whole ‘eating-tree-bark’-thing to survive when food was scarce, and setting traps for wild game like rabbits and squirrels, and chasing deer and other creatures throughout the forests of this planet, just trying to survive their world. And here we all sit, concerned with weight due to physical attractiveness, not health, survival, or the ability to run away from dangers.

So, what happened exactly to us?

How to Deal with Good & Bad Days

Do you have any friends or family members who have been dieting recently?

Ever hear about any of these?

"Free days"

"Cheat days"

"Bad days"

These are days where you go off your diet, where you eat whatever you want guilt free. A free for all of bindge eating or just that one horribly bad for you treat you cannot get enough of. I hate to say I used to think like that.

Nom. Nom. Nom. Bleeech..

I would have a specific day once a week, or sometimes a specific meal, where I would allow myself to eat whatever I wanted. The funny thing is I only really ate consistantly on diets, and mostly it was tiny portions of pathetic food, and when I was off them I would hardly eat a thing. A group of girls I used to hang out with would have something called FAT PARTIES. These are parties where we would watch movies and eat the worst foods ever. I used to bake the cookies, and heat the pizza bagels, but what I always binged on were fiery habenero doritoz and fruits. Those were my bad days, and the next day I felt so guilty about eating such non-nutritional rubbish, that I would do one of three things:

1. Eat nothing the whole day in the hopes that fasting would cleanse my system.

2. Drink so much water and eat nothing but stick veggies (carrots, celery, cucumber, etc.). 

or 

3. Just quit the diet for the next three days, eat when I had time, and not think or care about food, or weight loss, at all.

Well boys and girls, I had a bad day. But the definition of a bad day has changed. Four days ago I ate three meals, good and healthy meals with all the right portions, but I had a snack I knew I should have walked away from.Usually, I can substitute this magical item for something substantial and healthy, but no. Not then. I wish I could say it was do to stress eating, and I wish I could say it was due to emotional eating...but neither are true. It was due to the fact that they were in the house, and I was hungry, and really wanted to eat them while watching The Simpsons.

Do I hate myself?

Not really. 

Do I wish I had more control over what is in the pantry?

Hell fucking yes. 

But I do not live alone, and can only control myself. 

So, my advise? Try hard to stay on the course you set for yourself, but if you stray - or hydro-plate out of control - don't beat yourself up. The world will always have a reason to screw with your head, and eating a cookie instead of an apple

Let The Self Hate Die, Already!

Ever Had to Deal With One Of Those People? You know the ones I mean! The girls who cry cause they ate a grape, or those guys who are so obsessed about being ripped that they don't own shirts that fit them properly?

What do I do if I ate too many carbs yesterday?

None today? None for the rest of the week?

God, I'm such a fat ass, I ate that whooooole  cookie! Should I just live on the treadmill or what? Wahh... Wahh ...Wahh!

 Just shut the hell up!

Trust me, hating yourself over what you eat is the hardest habit to break. I have been there, a few times...maybe like hundreds...but the point is, STOP! Hating yourself is not gonna help you. There are plenty of people in the world who will gladly shred your self-esteem to tatters - DON'T HELP THEM DO IT! You are your own master, to quote Aida. No one but you is in charge of you. Yes, you will eat junk food, yes you will accidentally eat too much of your favorite food, and yes sometimes you will even have more than one glass of wine...for fun...not to help your heart. We all do it. There is no shame! People lay on the guilting just because they want to do it! I am not gonna tell you, "never eat cake." It just won't happen, it is unrealistic of me to lecture anyone. Cake is AWESOME! Well...except American fruit cake...that stuff is shit - But the point is RELAX!! No one is a saint when it comes to their favorite foods ( I myself am addicted to nectarines), and it is every one's cross to bear

 

...unless you are Jewish like me.....and then its our star of David to bear....

ANYWAY!

Yes, over-doing anything is bad for you. And why? Because life is all about moderation. The human body should not binge drink daily, because it would die right? So, given the same logic, eating copious amounts of non-healthy foods will also put your body out to pasture at a much earlier date.

This being said, there is a way to help make you honest about what you eat, without the self hate and residual longing stair at that box of donuts at work.

WRITE IT DOWN!

I started keeping a food journal when I was 8 years old, thanks to something I like to call Fat-camp-Auschwitz (that is not the true name of the camp, but let's pretend shall we?) "Nutrition classes" were all about "healthy substitutions" and we had to write down all our unhealthy decision, and we were told exactly why we were making stupid choices. Now, of course this is traumatizing and in no way shape or form am I suggesting this blog be about publicly flogging its followers into embarrassing situations. But as an adult, there was one thing that made sense. I would forget to eat on a daily basis, and I am the type of person that remembers everything she writes down. So, to keep me on the straight and narrow, in this case 'actually eating 4 times a day', I kept to a schedule. I would have 4 designated times to eat, and I would either make or buy something to eat at that time. This took 3 months to flesh out into a much better, much more flexible eating day. Now, this is what my food diary usually looks like:

Food Diary Example

  8:30 am

2 eggs over easy with 2 pinches of Cayenne pepper

4 medium strawberries and 1 kiwi sliced

2 slices of whole grain toast

1 Earle Grey tea (light and sweet)

1 pm

My Tuna Salad Recipe 

(see recipe)

 Small garden salad, drizzled with the juice of half a lemon, pinch of cracked black pepper

(cucumbers, tomatoes, green olives, thinly sliced onion and carrot, etc)

3 pm

Small apple, 1/3 cup of spicy hummus, 1 - 2 cups of carrots 

(depending on how hungry I am)

7 pm

Veggie Stir Fry 

(Many different variations and recipes)

10 pm

Something Sweet 

(like cookies I have baked recently, or popcorn if its a movie night)

"This will be the hardest step in the direction of healthy living. When to eat, what to eat, and how much to eat will be difficult for those first few months."

- Jason Verdisco

If I have to be totally and bluntly honest, there is a reason this process took so long to stick. It is tedious, annoying, and people made comments ("who does that?" was a popular one). Social pressures, like going out to lunch and/or eating unhealthy foods at social gatherings, are always difficult to navigate. Most of the time, when I was growing up, it was a wright of passage to leave the school grounds and go out to lunch with people. Most of the time, these restaurants were Chinese take-away, pizza places, sushi bars, or fast food chains. And being the only one getting a chopped salad and water, when every one else is devouring garlic knots and slices, and guzzling down soda, can be awkward. As we get older, however, everyone becomes obsessed with health, which flips the social stigmata in the opposite direction (if you are the only eating bad things, everyone else will judge you). 

So my advise? 

• No one is perfect, and everyone will eat bad stuff sometimes. So take a breather! You can eat your favorite foods, you can eat health foods, you can do whatever you want! But remember it is all about moderation!

• Buy a nice, small book and start writing down what you eat.  The more you write, the more you will be aware of what choices you make. The only thing you loose by eating healthy and being more active, are unhealthy habits and the excess fat.