Food Diary, For More Than Weight Loss

I started keeping a detailed diary of what I eat more than 3 years ago. It started as a way to loose weight because I was wolfing down food and saying: "I have no clue how I am gaining weight". I used a fitness and food tracker application on my phone to make it easier for me and to have no excuses. The tracker I used tracks your vitamin intake along with your carb, fat, and protein numbers. I started noticing that I was low on a lot of the vitamins and minerals, so I decided to scan in the supplements that I take so I can have a more accurate reading of what I really need.

My supplements were:
- A women's Multi-vitamin with low iron (6%)
- Fish oil ( I had an eye correction surgery that required taking fish oil and after surgery for 6 months)
- Iron supplement

Because I had this app, I was able to plan what I am going to eat for the whole week and buy my groceries accordingly. I usually enter what I will be eating tomorrow the night before.  Again, I am not a dietitian or claim to be telling you how to loose weight, I am here to share how tracking helped me with more than loosing weight. So without further ado let's see what it helped me with.

The dessert that started it all

- Butter is the source of my under the skin painful chin breakouts:

   After loosing 10 pounds and starting to increase my daily exercise routine I decided that my husband and I deserve adding desert to our menu. Especially that I know the calories in the desert I am making, and I know how many calories I am burning so there is no problem at all. Well, two weeks later I started having my pesky under the skin breakouts on my chin (thanks mom). I realized that I have had clear skin for the previous 6 months, so what is happening, what did I do wrong? Now, because I have a food diary I was able to go and look at the past month and see what changed and sure enough I noticed that I started adding dessert to the menu. The scientist in me started asking, dessert in general or an ingredient? I looked at all the ingredients and saw that butter is the only new addition to the table at a rate of 2 tablespoons per day. I stopped desserts for a month to clear my system, then started adding desserts made without butter for a whole month. No breakouts. Started adding butter and two weeks later breakouts.

- I am extremely intolerant to Stevia
  A friend of mine gave me an awesome recipe for iced tea and she told me that she sweetens it with Stevia. Why not? I will try that. I started sweetening my tea with Stevia and within couple of days I had so much pain in my intestines I got so bloated and gassy I felt I was going to explode. At that time of course, I did not know it was the sugar, I just knew that something is killing me and I don't know what it is. So I look at my diary to see what changed and that is when I saw that Stevia was the common factor.


- I am extremely intolerant to malt
  Same story with the Stevia, I had a malt shake and the same night had the same reaction of bloating and pain.

- Stopping my fish oil is the source of my back inflammation that won't go away
 This is where tracking your supplements can be so beneficial. I had a back injury that resulted in some inflammation in my back. I noticed that the inflammation was very persistent and would not go away even though I am doing all my workouts and stretches. From experience, when everything else fails look at what you eat. I went through my diary and found that I have been missing my fish oil for months. CVS stopped selling the one I like and I did not like any of the ones I bought after, so I just stopped taking it. I decided to bite the bullet and buy a new fish oil and take it even if it taste gross. Do you want to guess what happened next? You guessed it, after 3 weeks of taking my fish oil I started feeling the inflammation slowly go away.





I hope you guys find this helpful :)