In the last two articles in this series (catch up on Part 1 & Part 2 if you haven’t read them yet!) we spent a lot of time doing math and figuring out the science behind exactly how much you need to eat to stay alive and fuel your daily activities; maybe a little boring, but do you think Tony Stark just guessed how much energy it would take to power the Iron Man armor? Of course not, and neither should you!
I know what you’re thinking, “So now that we have all this data, how do we actually use it to our advantage?” Well, here is what I recommend you do next if you are serious about getting your eating habits in control and marching forward down the road to becoming a real life super-hero!
Keep Track of What You Eat!
If you’re looking for a starting point, this is it. Now, I have extolled the virtues of food journaling already, so I won’t beat you about the head again with why it is such an important tool… but starting first thing tomorrow, I want you to start keeping track of every thing you put in your mouth (seriously, everything.) You see, most people have no idea how much they actually eat! So I want you to take 5-7 days and record absolutely everything, so that at the end of the exercise you can calculate what your average daily caloric intake actually is. Now (this is important, so listen up), even though it might be difficult I want to you to make sure when you are reviewing your journal that you aren’t judging yourself or rationalizing your choices.
It doesn’t matter if Monday is Milton in accounting’s birthday and that is why you had that giant slice of tasty chocolate cake or that your pet goldfish, Jaws, died and you that’s why you powered down an entire carton of Ben & Jerry’s Phish Food to numb the pain. I am not discounting that life often seems like it is conspiring against your health goals, but at this point in our Heroes Transformation we are just trying to understand our bodies, habits and what we need to adjust to reach our goals. The slippery slope of justifications will just make it easier for you to revert back into bad habits! We need to approach this as scientifically as possible. So just gather the data, don’t judge it.
Yet.
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