Teaching | How To Choose The Perfect Food Journal – Tips From Movie Spies

Lately, I’ve been thinking about keeping a food journal for weight loss. I’ve also been craving a re-watching of True Lies or a James Bond movie. This strange blend of thought processes made me wonder: if a spy (like the Lego Spy below) kept a food journal, what would it look like?

Photo by cogdogblog

1. It has to be totally cool. Can you see James Bond carrying one of those black and white composition books? (The Lego Spy certainly doesn’t!) Movie spies carry sleek, stylish tools that enhance their image. A spy’s food journal would be in a sleek silver carrying case, that is impermeable to knives, bullets, fire and pressure. It would look like a fancy toy, but hide a powerful complexity. Yes, a spy’s food journal would never be something as mundane as a simple notebook.

2. It has to easy to use at the touch of a button. Spies get into tight situations where they may be immobilized. Any tool must be reachable at the end of an extended finger. In addition, it would need to be useful while under fire and ducking behind available concrete pillars or while hiding on the rear seat of a speeding get away car. Perhaps it would be voice activated or have a remote control. A spy would never stand for a food journal that took days to learn and needed multiple menus to access important functions. A spy needs a reliable, quick use tool that can record on the fly.

3. It has to store tons of information. A spy in the field is cut off from his allies. He won’t have access to the internet or the secret CIA files. He has to use his wits and what information he carries with him. Spies can’t afford to be bogged down by carrying multiple instruction manuals or reference materials with them. They must have this information built in the core program of their software. Therefore, a spy’s food journal would have a searchable database of foods, comprehensive in nature and fully integrated with the record keeping functions.

4. It must fit into a tuxedo pocket for quick concealment. Spies are constant on the move and watching over their shoulders. At any moment the bad guy may come around the corner and a vital piece of information must be made to disappear in seconds. No rustling of paper to give them away or bulky packages to mar the perfect outline of their formal evening dress. A notebook or bulky electronic gizmo would never do for a spy’s food journal. It must be compact, lightweight, and able to be stored easily.

5. It must be kept top secret from all but the most trusted allies. There are enemies everywhere and at any moment our hero could be caught. If the information fell in the wrong hands it could mean devastation. Only the most cryptic of codes will work in the world of movie spies. Even those authorized to view a spy’s notes must have the highest level of clearance. A spy could never have an ordinary food journal. It would need to be completely discreet and able to be password protected. If it was used in public, it must not be obvious to anyone what is being recorded.

6. It must be multi-functional. A spy doesn’t have the ability to carry a lot of gear. He must have tools that work exceptionally well and of the finest quality so he knows they will not fail him in a crisis. He would never use a plain screwdriver when a Leatherman would work. He needs the quality and compactness of the multi-tool. A spy’s food journal would need to meet the same criteria. In order to add it to his arsenal, it would need to be useful in a variety of situations, but it must do all it’s functions exceptionally well. And, as an added bonus, if it had a tazer built in, or a armor piercing laser, that would be useful too.

7. It must be fully portable and self contained. As should be clear from the description above, a spy is never tied down to any one place for very long. Even if he starts as part of a team, he must stay flexible and be ready to operate as an independent unit in a split second. He will leave behind any tools that need to be attached to something else to work. He can’t use a tool, no matter how high tech and multifunctional that needs to be plugged in if he’s stuck hiding out in a cave. A spy’s food journal would need to work wherever he finds himself without any extra attachments or required power source.

While I’m not a spy, and the above list is tongue-in-cheek, there is a lot of practical points to be considered when selecting and using a food journal as part of a weight loss effort. In the past I’ve had a lot of difficulty with keeping a food journal because it was either too hard to use, too bulky, or needed extra references to be effective.

In the end, what I found worked the best was a program on my PDA. Combined with a searchable, comprehensive database, it offered easy access and portability. In addition, unlike using a pen a paper tracking system, it didn’t tip anyone around me off that I was recording what I was eating. I could have been playing a game or checking my appointments. My PDA has a hard metal case that is sleek and silver. This is mostly for protection, but it looks really cool too. I’ve got multifunctionality since most food journals also record exercise, and PDAs have hundreds of programs available for use.

The hardest part was finding the right program. I settled on one that has an easy interface that is a bare bones tracker. There are at least a dozen different food, or food and exercise, programs for PDAs to help with weight loss because everyone’s needs are different. But then, all spies don’t operate the same way, either.

Have you used a food journal? What were your top criteria for the journal? Did you find that paper and pen worked better for you? Please let me know your thoughts in the comments below.

Gun Photo by dubswede Bomb Photo by ezioman

This entry is filed under Physical Health. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.