How Logging Your Food Gives You Control by Joan Kent, PhD
Yes, food logs are boring. Nevertheless, they help you control your food.
Food logs are subjective, and that’s a drawback. Yet they’re a lot more accurate than a verbal list of foods.
Study after research study has shown that self-monitoring through record keeping (food, workouts, cravings) is helpful. This holds true whether you work with a nutritionist or keep the log for your own use.
Even one or two weeks of logging will spark changes that help you gain control of your food.
In my experience, food logs can help you develop an awareness of eating behaviors that can’t be matched in any other way.
“I Always Thought I Ate More Vegetables”
My clients may think they know exactly what they eat, but what they say is often different from what their food logs reveal.
Clients who tell me verbally what they eat might be describing what they eat as a rule. Those descriptions don’t include extra snacks, unexpected treats, lunches out, dinner invitations, or beverage consumption.
Food logs are more accurate. They record all foods, including the ones you might want to forget, or small tastes and samples that are easy to forget.
Food logs reveal food groups that might be missing, such as vegetables or enough protein.
Food logs show when you eat, portion sizes, and time between meals.
Taken together, this information helps you improve your nutritional balance, which can help you control your eating.
Logging Shows Patterns
I don’t suggest you analyze your eating habits and patterns while you’re keeping the log, but make it easy.
Use a log that shows an entire day’s food on one page. Seeing your patterns increases your awareness and your ability to change eating habits that get in your way.
Nighttime binges, a common problem, might be due to skipping breakfast. The body will tend to make up for the deficit later.
Calorie corrections also occur when you eat too little food throughout the day. If you’ll be gone all day, plan convenient meals or snacks that don’t take much time to eat. Bring those foods with you to avoid the starve-now-binge-later trap.
Logging Reveals What You May Be Hiding
Food logs can also reveal smokescreens — intentional or not.
One client submitted a food log that gave precise info on every food in every meal she ate, along with exact portion sizes.
Vegetables were a different story. Her log would simply say “vegetables.” She never specified which ones — or her portions.
It looked like a clear case of hiding how few vegetables she ate. If she tasted a tiny morsel of broccoli, was she listing that as “vegetables”? Was she hoping I wouldn’t notice the vagueness because of all the other details?
I pointed out the discrepancy between the precision everywhere else in her log and the lack of precision with her vegetable intake. She muttered something about needing to be more accurate.
Did she really not know what she was doing? I couldn’t read her mind, obviously, but expected her to say, “Oops, busted!”
Another client reported that she’d begun to eat vegetables, which she wasn’t doing when we started working together.
This client used to bring her food logs but never show them to me. One day, I asked if I could see the log for that week. She looked worried but let me look at it. The only vegetables she had eaten were corn and carrots — not the ones I’d been hoping she’d eat. I always push green.
A third client told me that, on her birthday, she had eaten a slice of the cake a friend made for her. Her log showed she had eaten cake every day for 5 days.
Logging Can Change What You Eat
Most clients tell me logging has stopped them from eating junk — just because they didn’t want to write it in their logs.
Yet it’s almost instinctive to stop writing in a log when a junk food attack strikes. I suggest you keep logging — even if you don’t like it. Maybe especially if you don’t like it. It can stop the attack.
One client ate sugar regularly and would then binge. This happened frequently. She’d stop logging as soon as the binge started.
We agreed she would keep logging. She didn’t have to show me the logs, but she’d write down everything she ate during the binge.
When she did that, her binges got smaller, and the binge episodes became shorter. She lost over 100 pounds!
A food log is a solid accountability tool, whether you show it to anyone or not.
And now can I send you something? I’d love to send you “Stop Bingeing Now! 3 Simple Steps to Stop a Binge Once it Starts.” It’s on me. Just visit LastResortNutrition.com and grab your free copy.
