Benefits of Food Diaries and Journals

A Foodzilla food diary is just a tool to help you achieve your goals, it is not required to lose weight. However, it is very handy for those trying to control their eating habits, understand what's in their food and how much nutrition they're really getting from their meals.

Diaries are a good reminder of what has happened as time moves on. We can't improve our lives or habits if we don't measure or understand what we've done in the past.

In this post, we will explain how Foodzilla helps nutrition coaches / nutritionists / dietitians manage their clients and understand their eating habits easier as well as the general benefits of keeping a food diary.

How Foodzilla Helps Nutrition Coaches

Here's a quick summary of the benefits:

1. - Foodzilla makes it fun & easy for your clients to keep a food diary
2. - Identify patterns in their eating behavior
3. - Keep them on track and accountable

Easier Food Diaries with the Foodzilla mobile app

As a nutrition coach, your clients can use the Foodzilla mobile app to take pictures of their meals and create visual food diaries. Each meal will be analyzed with ingredients detected automatically and nutrition information calculated and sent to you as their coach.

Identify Eating Patterns

Every meal logged in the app is stored along with the picture and its date and time. This makes it easy to see what they're eating, when they're eating it, and being able to correct any mistakes. For example, your client entered the wrong ingredient or missed logging any other ingredient in their meal. Our app automatically suggests ingredients from the food picture using our food intelligence algorithm.

This technology is similar to what you've seen in Google Photos or Lens that detects objects, but our food intelligence tech is mainly focused on detecting food. We will explain more on this in a future post, subscribe to our newsletter to stay up to date.

Keep Them Accountable

Your clients can also see all their nutrition being tracked and can visualize their eating habits easily. You are also able to turn off certain features from the mobile app if you want your clients to not see nutrition information or calories (e.g.: for clients suffering from eating disorders). Learn more about how Foodzilla creates visual food diaries.

Food Diary Benefits

Now let's talk about the benefits of having a food diary or journal. Here is a quick summary:

1. - Identify eating problems
2. - Match expectations with reality
3. - Lose more weight
4. - Spot patterns in your lifestyle

Identify Eating Problems

As a client/user of the mobile app, visualizing your food diaries to quickly see what you've been eating recently takes the guessing out of many questions. For example, you may wonder, why do you eat when you're not hungry?

Well, you may find that your recent meals were very low on calories or that you've made a routine out of eating at a certain time even though you're not really hungry. Also depends on what nutrition you're getting from your meals. Having a diary gives you the opportunity to take a note of your energy levels, food you've eaten, your stomach and digestion state and emotional levels during the days. All of these things contribute to your eating habits every day.

Matching Expectations With Reality

Sometimes we feel like we're eating healthy or that we don't overeat. We can easily get into eating habits that make us consume more food than we need with less nutritious ingredients. We enjoy eating socially and in these situations there isn't much control of what we're gonna eat.

Having a food diary reveals our actual eating habits and what has really happened to our diet and nutrition intake. For many, this can feel tedious or unnecessary. However, it is very important in helping you understand what you're eating, when you're eating it and match what you expected with what you've actually consumed.

Weight Loss

According to research studies such as this and experts in nutrition, keeping a food diary over a period of time helps you lose more weight compared to not having one. Seeing what you've eaten with all the details and nutrition in each meal keeps yourself accountable and helps you stay on track to achieving your weight loss goals.

Spotting Patterns

Visual food diaries make it easier to spot patterns affecting digestion, weight gain, sleeping late and more. For example, you may not know that your stomach is sensitive to onions which could be one of the reasons causing your digestion discomfort. Another one could be eating foods with added sugar or high amounts of sodium at night impacting the quality of your sleep.

A Foodzilla food diary is just a tool to help you achieve your goals, it is not required to lose weight. However, it is very handy for those trying to control their eating habits, understand what's in their food and how much nutrition they're really getting from their meals.

As a coach/nutritionist/dietitian, Foodzilla makes it easy to manage nutrition for your clients and makes it fun for them. You can signup today and get a 10 days free trial. This is just one of the features of Foodzilla, we have a lot more.