Day Eight: Food Journal Reflection

I have been using the MyFitnessPal calorie counting app on and off for the past year and a half, but this was the first time I dutifully used it for absolutely everything I ate for more than five days in a row. Part of why I would use it so intermittently is because of my crazy weekend eating/drinking habits. I didn’t want to acknowledge how many calories I was actually consuming on the weekend, but this forced my to acknowledge this and make some personal decisions based upon what I saw.

I decided to cut down on my drinking, not just because of this assignment, but it helped keep me accountable. It also helped finally keep myself accountable for the things I was eating; not just the amount, but also the content.

MyFitnessPal keeps track of things like sodium, fat, sugar, and vitamin content, but I hadn’t really paid too close attention to these amounts prior to this assignment. After one week of keeping track of everything, everyday, it was apparent that I wasn’t getting nearly enough vitamins and potassium, so I made that my goal/priority to make sure I was getting enough of these things in my diet. I started actually taking my daily vitamin daily and trying to eat more foods rich in potassium. While I still am having a hard time getting enough potassium, I’m generally getting better amounts of other vitamins and I am actually feeling better.

I could see food journaling activities to be potentially very beneficial for my future students. Hopefully they would be able to truly apply the activity to their lives and make reflections upon how their food affects their health much as I did. They would at least be somewhat forced to at least start seeing and thinking about the things they’re putting in their bodies.

I also feel like even if there wasn’t any time specifically dedicated to teaching health that this activity to easily be linked to other subjects individually or as the tying factor between multiple subjects. Science could be brought in in the terms of nutrition, what food is made of, and how we get energy from it. Math could be brought in for calculating the amount of calories and other nutrition facts based upon the serving size and actual portions eaten. We could also set goals and analyze the journals in writing. Social studies could even be tied in to study typical diets of different cultures. It could easily be the tying theme for all of these subjects as a nutrition unit. I hope that I will be able to use my ideas for a unit like this sometime in the future; I think the students would really learn a lot from the experience.