If you are struggling with being consistent in completing your food tracking diary, get an early entry in to get the ball rolling and watch the momentum pull you through to completing it that day.
Media: 1x relevant photo (eg. Screenshot of empty tracker Vs full tracker showing early breakfast entry)
It's 2024. We all live very busy lives. With something like completing your daily food tracking diary it can be easy to convince yourself that it would be a good idea, prudent even, to fill in your food tracking diary at the end of the day, after you have finished eating and drinking for the day, in one shot, as doing so would save you time and effort.
Big mistake.
Here are the excuses your lazy gremlins will now be armed with to convince you to stray from the path at the end of your busy, draining, stressful day:
"You are tired and stressed, take it easy old friend. It was s a tough day. To fill in that diary now will take far too much bother. We'd have to sit there and try to:
- _RECALL EVERYTHING_ we ate and drank (in reality, is it actually that hard or that much to remember? Just how much can you have eaten and drank in one day?! And let's get real here, we're selecting foods from drop down menus here, not writing an essay)
- we have to fill in _A WHOoooooLE DAY'S WORTH, IT'LL TAKE LONGER THAN IT WOULD HAVE IF WE HAD DONE IT ALONG THE WAY_ (though even in this case, doing a days worth in one shot should only take you around 3-5mins, but that's them gremlins for you)
- ok, if we really must do it, let's do it in a bit after a spot of relaxing to "recover" from the day first, to get us in the right zone to complete such a mammoth of a task. Yes, that's it, then we'll get right on it...
We all know how this one ends... Zzz.
Gremlins:1 You:0
Instead, try getting an early entry into the diary. That first cup of coffee or protein shake perhaps with a quick sync of your activity/calorie burn tracker to see the deficit dent that you've already made giving you that lovely little win to boost you up which we all love and seek. It's that feeling that we're after, leaving us wanting more of it that will get us to check in again later on how much bigger of a dent we've made into our days calorie deficit and keeping track of our foods in the diary throughout the day to see how that dent is going in a gamification kind of way. It will indirectly cause us to avoid breaking from our food plan as we don't want to see a loss when we check the "score" (deficit) at the next interval. We also feel a sense of wanting to increase that deficit for two major reasons: a) the psychological win and b) increasing the deficit means we can enjoy more of what we like to eat when we choose to cash it in later, guilt-free and in full accordance with our goals, not causing any losses. It's the feeling of having your cake and eating it if you pardon the obvious pun.
Couple all this with the fact that studies show that merely starting something increases your chances of finishing it hugely (some studies have shown up to an 80% increase in chances of completion) and we have a winning formula for consistency in completing our daily food tracking diaries.
Us:1 Gremlins:0.
Comentários