21 Day Challenge: Write Down Everything You Eat
As the famous saying goes, “What gets measured gets improved.”
I’ve found that to be undeniably true in my life. When I’m not doing well at something important to me, my first step is to take stock of what I’m doing now so I better understand what steps to take to improve. If you don’t know what you’re doing wrong, how can you fix it?
Once each year or so, I like to spend a few weeks recording my diet. I strive to eat healthy but often fall short—especially if I’m busy and it’s been awhile since I’ve paid attention to what I’m putting in my body.
For the next 21 days, I’ll be recording everything I eat on this thread in The Riskology Lab and, if you care about your health and what you eat, I welcome you to join me.
This is a judgment free exercise. It doesn’t matter if you already eat healthily or if you struggle every day. There’s also no commitment necessary to change the way you eat now. The goal is only to record everything so you know, with certainty, what your eating habits really are. This is the baseline you need to know how to make a successful change.
But don’t be surprised if you find yourself improving your diet over the course of the challenge as well. As so much research has proven, you can’t measure something without affecting the measurement you get. It’s called the observer effect. [1] Scientists work hard to reduce and account for this in their studies, but we’re going to embrace it. If the goal is to eat healthier, then just measuring what you eat now will pave the way for that outcome.
So, if you care about your body and your mind and you want to better understand your own eating habits so you can improve them, I hope you’ll join me in this simple challenge.
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