I see a lot of people these days going on about diet and fitness. There’s a lot to be said in favour of a healthy lifestyle. I just don’t like that so many people give control of their lives to diet plans which cost money.

I decided to monitor my own diet over a week and found that on a few days I had vegetables with every meal and I wasn’t snacking much, these days were my “healthy days”. Another day I had a whole pizza for breakfast and four biscuits through the day as well as maltesers and only a tiny bit of cucumber, this was a bad day.

So my diet chart isn’t a device to dictate my meals, it is something I came up with so I could evaluate what I was eating and why I had eaten those things. The chart was eight boxes down by ten across (because it was easy to find online and suited my purpose), I wrote everything I ate at a time in one box, fish chips and beans would all be in the same box and having only three boxes filled per day would be ideal as that would mean three meals without snacking.

The pizza for breakfast is because I wanted to fill up before a long walk, a workday and another long walk during which I would have two biscuits to sustain me. Therefore that days pizza and biscuits were reasonable even if not ideal. I can think in a logical way about whether I’ve been unhealthy and I can change my ways based on that. Imagine having chips for every meal in one week, the answer is to cut down on chips from now on.

Other people may not understand my chart and I may not understand theirs but what we can all agree on is that we can all reach our health goals by applying a little logic and thought.

Just in future think about what you’re eating, write it down if you must in a chart like mine and just use your own logic to evaluate yourself. It will prove cheaper than a paid diet and there’s more pride to be had in self evaluation.