On June 16, 2023, I started a food and exercise diary out of dissatisfaction with my unhealthy eating habits and unrealized fitness goals. I wasn’t exactly sure how keeping track of everything I ate each day and whether or not I worked out might improve my health, but I figured I’d give it a shot and commit to it for at least one year so that I could give myself ample time to note the effects this practice would have on my life. Here’s what I learned.

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First, these were my main goals that led me to start a food and exercise diary:

1. Consume less sugar. I have a big sweet tooth and I love to bake, so consuming less sugar has been a goal of mine for a long time.
2. Eat more vegetables. For obvious health reasons but also because I genuinely like vegetables, but the prep work involved sometimes dissuades me from eating as many as I would like to.
3. Work out more. I hoped to exercise at least 3 times a week, ideally 4 or 5, with the goal of building muscle.

My goals set, I had to find a process that would work for me. I considered keeping a physical journal, but ultimately decided against it for two reasons: 1) I didn’t want to carry a journal around with me everywhere I went every day, and 2) if I forgot the journal or couldn’t take it with me, I would risk forgetting to input the foods I was consuming, which would limit how useful the journal would be, counteracting the whole point of the project.

I decided I wanted to use a mobile app so that I’d always have my journal with me. I hunted around the food journals out there, but a lot of them included features that I didn’t want, like having a calorie counter or requiring that you weigh the food out or keep track of other things I didn’t care about. So, I figured I would just download a basic, non-food-and-fitness-related journaling app and make my own template that simply prompted me to fill out bulleted lists of the foods I consumed and workouts I did that day. I ended up going with the app Day One, as its free plan had everything I needed, but I’m sure others would have worked just fine for my purposes. I made a template (shown below) and got started.

To keep myself focused on the goals outlined above, I followed a few guidelines:

1. I didn’t list glasses of water or tea that I drank black.
2. I wrote out the main components of some dishes where just a label wouldn’t be specific enough. For example, “PB+J” needs no real explanation, but if I made a stew with kale, sweet potatoes, and farro, then piled on the Pecorino Romano, I recorded those rather than just writing “stew”.
3. I wasn’t going to obsessively count things like every tablespoon of oil used to cook a meal. Even though some might want that information because fats have a lot of calories (and, of course, fat), these aren’t concerns of mine, and I have always eaten a somewhat high fat diet and feel very good on it.

My first entry started things off on an unusually bad note—I think I’d hosted a party that day—so there was nowhere to go but up! Lots of sweets and not many vegetables, although I did exercise, so that was something, at least.

And off I went, recording my year in food and exercise. Onto what I learned.

Takeaways

1. My biggest concern with starting a food and exercise journal was that I would nurture some obsessive eating tendencies or feel so preoccupied with the accountability to my diary that it would negatively influence my social life (e.g., preventing myself from going to things because there will be drinking or lots of cake or something). These fears weren’t realized. I quickly adapted to inputting foods or workouts into my journal as soon as I finished them, but consistency did not devolve into compulsivity.
2. I had anticipated that seeing the things that I was consuming form a list throughout the day would positively influence the rest of my decisions over the course of the day. In some ways this was the case, in others not. If, for example, I started the day with a pastry and sweetened coffee, it didn’t ultimately prevent me from having dessert at the end of the day, as much as I would’ve liked it to. On the other hand, seeing a lot good food choices, like eating lots of vegetables, in a day or working out that day did make me feel proud of myself and help me to continue the good choices throughout the day, which I was content to find.
3. Although I didn’t do this as often as might have been useful, when I did go through the past week’s entries to reflect on my choices, I gained some insights that I might not have had I not started the journal. This was especially the case with alcohol consumption. On particularly social weeks, it wasn’t uncommon for me to see daily drinking of multiple alcoholic beverages. This definitely informed the next week’s behavior, leading me to schedule coffee dates with friends rather than just going with the old standby of “let’s grab a drink” and to skip the glass of wine with dinner on the nights I stayed in.

The Big Question: Will I keep the journal up indefinitely?

Alright, so I learned some things, it was an overall positive experience—will I keep this thing going? I’ll be honest, the final month leading up to my anniversary with the journal was a slog. I didn’t really feel like keeping track anymore, but I knew that I was going to push myself to complete the year in honor of my commitment to myself and my health. Strangely, after I did reach my anniversary, I stopped feeling so exasperated about it. It’s been nearly a month since, and I have yet to miss a day. Will I keep this up forever? No, I don’t see why I should, being that daily journaling can be a bit cumbersome. But this little research project of mine has taught me that keeping track of things can be enlightening in unexpected ways, and it’s only increased my understanding of myself as very much a routine-oriented person. This knowledge will no doubt inform my approach to future health and fitness projects.