Weight Management: Discovering Your Eating Patterns

Your plan to reach and stay at a healthy weight is in motion. Wherever you are on your healthy eating journey, this may be a good time to recognize your efforts, build on your successes, and see if anything is getting in your way.

Keeping a journal is one way to uncover your eating patterns. When you know more about your patterns, you will have good information to help you stay on track.

For example, you may find that you're not eating when you're actually hungry. Or even though you feel full, you might eat everything left on your plate. Some people who keep a journal discover that the daily treats in the break room at work add up. Or they notice they do great on four days of the week, but that it's on the weekend when they slip up.

Keep a journal your way

If keeping a healthy eating journal sounds like something you could do, try it for a week.

In your journal, you can include anything you think might help.

Here are some examples of things to track:

  • Time and place
  • The food you ate
  • The exchange or calorie count
  • Your feelings
  • Who was with you
  • A hunger scale (1 on the scale means you are extremely hungry and 10 means you're so full that you feel sick)

Discover your patterns

After keeping a journal, then go back and see what you discover about yourself.

You might discover patterns of eating when you're not hungry or of eating after you feel full. That's okay, because these patterns can be your guide to help you adjust your weight management plans or to think of new ways to keep motivated.

Start tracking how you eat

The way you track your eating isn't important. Do what's easy and right for you. You can use this chart, a notebook, or an app you download to your smartphone or tablet device. The following chart is an example of how your eating journal might look.

Your journal: Tracking your eating patterns

Example:

Thursday at 3 p.m. Alone.

3 slices of cold pizza

1200 calories

9

I skipped lunch because of a meeting. I was angry. After the first slice, I went back and ate the last two pieces left in the box.