Introducing Lean Mode, Color Code—Not Your Usual Food Diary

Whether it’s losing that last 10 pounds, or jump starting the first 100, you’re in "lean mode" when you take steps to stop your mindless eating by tracking what you eat every day. It's easy, fun and motivating when you color it into the new Lean Mode, Color Code—Not Your Usual Food Diary. In eBook, too.

Buy eBook version and download it now.  Buy spiral-bound version.

Track what you eat every day in a food journal and you could LOSE TWICE AS MUCH WEIGHT as people who don't keep track at all, according to a study by the Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research, published in the August, 2008, American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

What exciting news, we thought!

But the general response to the study confirming food diaries as an effective and low cost way to lose twice as much weight was pretty much: Zzzzzzzzzz.

Perhaps it's because lots of people think it would be too much drudgery to write everything down (and then reread it and try to make sense of it all.)

With the Lean Mode Food Diary, there's less writing, more coloring!

For an instant reward each day, color in the FoodDot™ next to each healthy food choice you make. For extra motivation to eat right, try to connect-the-FoodDots with color all day long.

Over time, as you stay in Lean Mode you'll create a bold, permanent mosaic of your improving eating and exercise habits. Positively brilliant, you are.

You'll create an easy-to-review, in-your-face visual of how much you've been doing (or not doing) to improve your eating and exercise habits. Not seeing much color is motivation to get back on track.

Lean Mode helps you stay focused.

You become accountable—to yourself—to learn self-empowerment and self-motivation! That's what's going to work for you in the long run, as you learn to take control of your eating and exercise habits in an easy, fun and sustainable way.

You don't need a reality weight-loss show and someone screaming at you. Who needs the drama? What happens when they stop?

You just need an unthreatening way to ease yourself into some better fitness habits. Once you see how easy it is for you to take control, the rest will follow.

If you've tried to stick to a healthy diet or fitness program before—and failed—this is the tool you were missing!

Why we re-invented the food diary.

Americans spend billions on dubious and expensive weight loss products that clearly aren't working, as the growing obesity epidemic shows. Thus we set out to shake up the humble, proven, but underutilized food diary by re-imagining it with our unique and motivating color-coded goal setting system.

Even we were surprised at its transformation into a fun and easy-to-use journaling tool that really keeps you engaged throughout the days, weeks, and half-year our food diary covers.

Coloring is way more fun and rewarding than just writing in a journal (boring!) and it makes it easier for you to quickly see your progress. A lack of color is a reminder and motivator for you to try a little harder.

One of our early product reviewers, who has kept a food diary for over three years, offered this critique:

"WOW! I love it!"

Which was thrilling to hear, because we love it too! The general consensus was that this was "not your usual food diary." So that's what we put on the cover.

Color in the shapes to get in shape.

As with all of our ColorCode Mode™ Journals, the main idea is to color in the positive things you do each day, such as eating more veggies, exercising, drinking more water, or having a junk-food-free day. As for the not-so-positive things, you still write them down, but you don't get to color them in.

We created PowerCircles and FoodDots for you to color in and connect in order to remind, reward and motivate yourself to keep repeating your healthy eating and exercise actions until they become habits.

That’s the real pay-off, because habits are things that come naturally to you, not like a diet you just can't wait to quit. Habits are what make up that elusive “healthier lifestyle” the experts tell you to develop. It's much easier to achieve if you take it in small steps.

amazon.com Customer Review calls it "the best food diary I've ever used."

Our early journals users clearly agree that this is Not Your Usual Food Diary, giving it a five star rating on amazon.com, calling it the "best ever!" food diary, and appreciating its ease-of-use, versatility and the "amazing" power of coloring to motivate you.

Later reviewers have knocked off points for the journal's size and weight. We erred on the side of giving you six months of journaling (270 pages), a real commitment so that you can truly establish new eating habits and see more lasting results.

But for a lighter weight option, try our eBook version of the Lean Mode Food Diary, where you can print out only the pages you are using, as you go, for the full six months. Our eBook also has more color than our paperback version.

But we always hear our customers and value your input and are looking into a smaller, shorter version of the Lean Mode Food Diary, possibly with more color. Sort of a Lean Mode Lite. Let us know your thoughts on it at info@shop.colorcodemode.com.

Do it your way.

If there's one thing we've learned over the years from our valued Streaming Colors Fitness Journal users it's that you know your own minds and habits, and have your own pace, style and preferences for journal keeping (and are very creative about it!)

The Lean Mode Food Diary provides a flexible journaling framework in which you make all the decisions about color coding, food and exercise goals and rewards, and the level of detail in your journaling, and it works with any program. Our goal is to simply help you journal as continuously as possible, because consistency is what produces the best results.

Lean Mode devotes a full page each day to what you eat, along with an area to track exercise.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.

Sample page colored in with highlighters. CLICK IMAGE TO ENLARGE

Get real about your eating and exercise habits.

If you're exercising regularly but your weight loss has slowed or stalled, you may want to zero in on your food intake by tracking it in the Lean Mode Food Diary.

Most people are shocked to see how many calories (or fats, or carbs) they are really taking in when they track what they eat over the course of a few weeks. Most people tend to over estimate how much they exercise and under estimate how much they eat.

The only way to know for sure is to write it down. The insight you gain will help you set specific goals (or just eat less so that you won't have to write it down.)

The Lean Mode Food Diary can also help you identify when you are "eating around" your exercise program, adding high calorie treats that cancel out the extra calories you've burned.

No other food diary "connects" it all like this:

Not only will the Lean Mode Food Diary help you track your total daily calories, the FoodDots you color in each day adjacent to your healthy eating choices will help you spot your healthy (or unhealthy) food choices.

Then, you'll get extra motivation to eat healthy all day long by trying to connect-the-FoodDots with color on your daily page.

With most food diaries you can simply write down the extra calories in a brownie and forget about it. With Lean Mode, you'll think twice before breaking your chain of color.

At the end of each day there are PowerCircles to fill in to celebrate meeting your daily eating and exercise goals, being "free" of a certain food item you're trying to avoid, and to record your days of continuous journaling, and your water intake.

If you set goals, there are Weekly Tabs, 4Week Bubbles and a Your Half Year in Lean Mode summary page. With Lean Mode, all your good eating and exercise actions add up to results you can see (and be proud of!)

Sample page colored in with highlighters. CLICK IMAGE TO ENLARGE

With our color coding system, you always have the option of backing way off on detail. Or, you can keep setting very specific and progressively more challenging goals and rewards, which makes Lean Mode our most intense tracking system yet.

The Lean Mode Food Diary is undated, so you can write in your own dates and get started right away.

There are just two main rules with Lean Mode.

COLOR IN ONLY THE GOOD THINGS YOU DO.

COLOR IN SOMETHING EVERY DAY.

Consistency is king, so there are places in Lean Mode to track and celebrate your consecutive days of journaling. Sounds hard? Not any harder than walking or running off that extra 300-400 calories you might be eating every day without even realizing it.

Pick up a pen. Jot something down. Pick up a highlighter. Lay down some color. How many reps? That depends on how many things you eat each day.

Over time, the patterns of color will make it easier for you to see your progress, perhaps even before your body shows changes. Lack of color makes it clear where you need to do more. And looking back on all the color you've added, reminds you of your ability to take control of your eating and exercise habits.

DIY (Do-It-Yourself) fitness—because really, no one else can do it for you.

Like all of our ColorCode Mode Journals, the Lean Mode Food Diary combines the fun of coloring with the power of journaling. Call it self-reporting, self-awareness, or self-motivation, ColorCode Mode Journals help you build the self-control that truly empowers you to get fit and stay fit through a healthier lifestyle.

Change your habits. Change your life.

Buy eBook version and download it now.  Buy spiral-bound version.

There's still more to learn about the Lean Mode Food Diary.

Get all the specifics from our booksellers listing.

Read the back cover of the Lean Mode Food Diary.

A simple, but powerful concept

The ABC's of our Lean Mode eBook that you can order right now!

Lean Mode for lean times—10 reasons it's just what you need right now

The Lean Mode, Color Code—Not Your Usual Food Diary is available in paperback from major booksellers in the US, UK, EU, and Australia. You can even have it printed and bound, while you watch (in about 6 minutes), by the amazing Espresso Book Machines, cropping up in bookstores across the globe! The handy spiral-bound and eBook versions are available exclusively in our online shop.