ColorCodeMode.com

Lean Mode, Color Code - Not Your Usual Food Diary
Half year (28 weeks) food and exercise journal. Just add dates — and color!
*Spiral-bound edition available exclusively on this site.

Description

From Jennifer and Alexis Luhrs, creators of the popular Streaming Colors™ Fitness Journal "healthy habit-forming calendar" (since 2004), comes the new Lean Mode, Color Code—Not Your Usual Food Diary, with PowerCircles™ and FoodDots™ you color in and connect on each full page devoted to recording daily diet and exercise details.

Studies show people who keep a food diary every day during their weight loss effort can lose twice as much weight as people who don't journal. Food diaries are a proven but underutilized weight loss tool to help you focus on small daily choices. Now the ColorCode Mode team reinvents the humble food diary to be quick, easy, and fun to use.

As with all of the ColorCode Mode™ Journals, the main idea is to color in the good things you do each day, such as eating more veggies, exercising, drinking more water, or having a junk-food-free day. Color helps remind, reward and motivate you to practice a healthy action long enough for it to become a habit you hardly have to think about (like taking a shower in the morning.) Healthy habits feel comfortable and normal—unlike torturous diets and exercise regimens you can’t wait to quit—and are the key to better fitness and a healthier lifestyle!

Jot down what you eat on each daily page, and then grab your highlighters. Next to each food entry you made is a FoodDot to color in if you consider that food item or meal to be healthy. Not seeing a lot of color on your page can give you insight into which small behaviors you need to set goals to change. Can you connect-the-FoodDots™ on each daily page by making healthful food choices all day long?

A Color Code and Goals page at the beginning of every week gives you the option of setting small, achievable daily goals that you will color into your PowerCircles each day as you meet them. Track such things as a daily calorie goal, exercise goal, your water intake, healthful food items you've added, or a day free of the unhealthy food item you think you can't live without. Your PowerCircles help you take control of your eating and exercise habits.

Keep it simple or add detail and more challenging goals and weekly tabulations as you progress through seven 4Week Bubbles (28 days each) for a full half year of journaling. UNDATED, so you can add your own dates and start at any time, this food diary is versatile and completely customizable to fit your habits, goals, program, pace of change and involvement, and style and level of journaling.

Since continued journaling is the key to success, the flexibility of this journal makes it easy for you to stay engaged in Lean Mode, rather than just leaving your eating and exercise behaviors to chance. Throughout the journal there are places to track and celebrate your continuous weeks of journaling.

Because the main concept is for you to add your own color (and notice when you haven't!) this food diary features all black-and-white (and gray) graphics for you to color in throughout its spiral-bound 270 pages. (Laminated paperback cover is full color, 7.50 inches wide x 9.25 inches high.)

Table of Contents
I. Not Your Usual Food Diary Intro 1
II. Some People—Why 21st Century People Need Food Diaries 3
III. Before Your Begin, Set Up Your Stats and Quick Look-Up Pages 12
IV. Getting Started, and Staying in Lean Mode 24
V. Lean Mode, Color Code Food Diary Pages 32
VI. Your Half Year in Lean Mode 258

In addition to 196 daily tracking pages, and 28 weekly color-code/goals and tabulation pages, the Lean Mode Food Diary includes helpful information on habits in general, getting started, setting goals and rewards, rating your health and fitness before and after using the journal, pages for coloring in special achievements or milestones, and the occasional motivational saying.

There are 5 pages of Quick Look-Up Charts you can fill in with your most common food items or recipes or exercise routines, along with an already filled-in Healthy Super-Foods Quick Look-Up Chart to make it easier for you to add healthful new food items to your diet. An optional section on the new USDA Food Pyramid includes a Quick Reference Chart of Daily Calories & Food Groups and a place to note the specifics of your own Food Pyramid plan. The Lean Mode Food Diary works with any program.

The design of the daily page is very adaptable to your own preferences for tracking, including columns for entering what you ate, when/where, quantity, calories, fat, carbs, fiber, and protein, along with a blank column to track a category of your own choice.

Lean Mode rewards you every step of the way. Coloring in and connecting your FoodDots and PowerCircles each day is an immediate reward for making positive choices. Setting optional goals each week and tallying them up in your Weekly Tabs and then in your 4Week Bubble can result in you rewarding yourself with healthy, non-food treats like a new outfit, DVD, massage or concert tickets. Of course the main reward is the creation of healthier habits! At the end of the journal, Your Half Year in Lean Mode page lets you track how many of your 4Week Bubbles you met, and specify another reward you'll give yourself.

Lack of color in your FoodDots or PowerCircles is a reminder and motivator to get back on track, and/or set more realistic goals. Over time, a build-up of color is a reminder of your ability to make improvements in your health behaviors. Every completed journal is a unique mosaic of your half year of building healthier habits.

Designed for use by adults in normal health. Nothing in the Lean Mode Food Diary is intended as a substitute for medical advice or counseling. Consult your doctor if you have any risk factor or health-related condition that might prevent you from using the food diary as a fitness tool. Food diary is intended as a health promotion tool, not as a medical or physical therapy intervention. Not designed for unsupervised use by children.

To avoid ink bleed-through , use highlighters, not markers. Printed on acid-free, archival quality paper. Printed in USA. Patent pending.

The Lean Mode, Color Code—Not Your Usual Food Diary was created and authored by Jennifer and Alexis Luhrs, a mom/daughter publishing/creative team that has had a lifelong devotion to healthy eating habits and preventive health. Mom, Jen, is a health/medical copywriter/creative director who worked with the Stanford Prevention Research Center to develop the HealthBuzz™ web site that was co-branded with msnbc.com in 1997. She wrote the content of the original Streaming Colors Fitness Journal based on established principles of health behavior change, and Dr. Wes Alles, Director of the Health Improvement Program at Stanford University, reviewed the journal's written content to ensure that it is sound. Calling on their backgrounds in Industrial Design and Architecture, respectively, Jen and Alexis have designed the color-coded daily tracking systems of their ColorCode Mode™ Journals to be intuitive and adaptable, but most of all, easy and fun to use.

Copyright 2008 Luhrs Media Co.