A while ago the now-defunct Elastic Waist was currently looking for “anti-diet” tips, a concept which I love both for the opportunity of turning the diet industry’s sound bites back on them and for the opportunity to practice being witty and pithy. However, despite my being both witty AND pithy (in my own esteemed opinion) they did not chosen any of my tips. So I’m going to share my favorite anti-diet tip with you:
“Keep a food journal in which you write down every single bite you eat. That way, if dieting doesn’t work out for you, at least you’ll have a head start on your memoirs. Really, your posterity will thank you. “
Confessions of an Chronic Food Journal-er
For years (and I do mean years – about 17 of them, over half my life), I took to heart the advice that the best way to keep off the pounds is to write down every morsel that goes into your mouth. It makes you accountable! It helps you “see” what you eat (in case you missed it at the actual time you were eating it)!! It allows you to make charts and graphs of all your macronutriets!!! BRING ON THE OCD!!!!
I even had a fancy little spreadsheet that I created myself to track every number even remotely related to food. By the time I quit doing it, it was so elaborate it took more time from my day than I’m currently willing to admit to. If I’m really honest with myself (which I try to be only on Tuesdays and Saturdays, so you get lucky today), it is probably the #1 most eating-disordered thing I have ever done. I used that fascist journal to dictate exactly what I would and, more importantly, would not eat. If it didn’t fit in my journal, I didn’t eat it. Not even a bite. Not even if it was the special trifle our German friends made us as a gift that was, so my husband told me, “one-in-a-lifetime good.”
“You have so much self control!” people used to always say to me. It wasn’t self-control though – it was fear, pure and simple. That little journal kept everything safe for me but the price I paid was having all the parameters of my life defined by Excel. Not even Bill Gates would want to live that life.
My Wake-Up Call
A couple of years ago my sister wrote a book on our grandmother, a woman whom I loved in a way that I have never been able to love anyone since. She was a teacher, a leader in her community, a published author, a mother of seven (!) children and so beautiful that she turned heads, even in her sixties. She died when I was nine and her memory is sacred to me. I still talk to her in my head sometimes. (See? Honest Tuesdays!)
She was also actively bulimic up until her death. An entire lifetime of bingeing and vomiting. When my sister started going through her journals for the book, she found something so sad and so sickening that it shook me to my pilates-honed core: page after page after page of food. Every bite she took, recorded in her beloved hand.
I knew nothing about how she felt when her children were born. But I could tell you every piece of food she ate on April 12, 1964.
My journal died that day. I killed it. I did not want that to be the legacy I left my children and, someday, grandchildren.
Easier Said Than Done
Like everything worth doing, giving up my journal was harder than I expected it to be. I was afraid to eat without it. It required me to eat according only to my hunger. I had to trust my own body – the very thing that every diet and “health” purveyor out there told me was my worst enemy. My body would sabotage my efforts with its insatiable hunger, they told me. My body wanted to be fat & lazy and unless I mastered it, it would ruin me, they whispered.
I didn’t know how to answer those thoughts in my head at first. It was a leap of faith. I turned off my computer and deleted the file. I called friends to keep my mind busy so it wouldn’t mentally do the calculating that Excel had once done. And at last, I found a different way to emulate my grandmother: I started writing.
Count Your Blessings
Today I still keep a journal. A gratitude journal. Every night before I go to bed, I write at least a couple of sentences about what I am grateful for. Sometimes they are small: “Today I’m grateful for bobby pins. How else could I have all these cool layers in my hair and still get my sweat on at the gym?” Sometimes they are so big I can’t wrap my heart all the way around them: “Today I am grateful for my baby’s chubby fingers as he waved hello to me (and his brother, and the neighbor, and the dog, and the nightstand.)” Sometimes they are tired: “Today I’m grateful for a warm bed and no insomniac tendencies.” Sometimes they are pages and pages of all the blessings God has given me. This is what I want to leave my children to read someday, when I’m gone.
So if you must count something, count these moments. And be grateful for every one.
And in case you are curious as to what happened to my weight after I quit food journalling – the answer is: absolutely nothing. It turns out that “they” are wrong. If I feed my body when it’s hungry and leave it alone when it’s not (just basic respect, in my opinion), it takes care of itself just fine. For which I am very grateful.
Note: Thursdays are greatest hits days here at GFE. This post originally ran January 2008. I will add that almost two years later, giving up my food journal is still one of the best decisions I have ever made. With the exception of my current pregnancy, my weight has stayed within a ten-pound range without any help from a journal. Every time I blog about this, I get a few e-mails from people telling me how food journalling saved their lives. I’m not knocking journalling if it works for you – in fact I’m thrilled that you have found what works for you – I’m just saying that it didn’t for me.
You're green like me: You also recycle ;-D (I feel so devious when I do it because I just sneak in and change the date….muuaaahahahaha!!)
Did I already tell you that this post changed my life? Thank you from the bottom of my heart.
Yesterday I linked to his post and I think a few folks came over to check out the story of your amazing Grandma.
And yes, you are witty and pithy!
PS. Seems starting this month, bloggie-people are either throwing their food records away or re-embracing them. Interesting too watch.
Deb
Thanks Deb! You're the reason I decided to recycle this one:) So glad it helped you.
Wow. Thank you for this. I was thinking about starting a food journal again. But I'm not gonna. I'm going to start a gratitude journal. Thank you.
and it didnt work for me either.
Im not an obsessive food person and I swear journaling almost got me there.
love the gratitude stuff. When I pray with my daughter at night is when I do mine now. Sometimes she giggles at the seeming reaches (thank you G-d for not letting my keys slide down the big drain thing when I dropped em in the parking lot at the grocery this morning) but it always works for me to refocus.
here's to greatest hits posts!!
I think the food journal advice was intended for people who were overweight because they take in 3500 calories a day but will swear on a stack of bibles that they only take in 1500 and can't figure out why they are overweight. It's for people who eat twice what they burn off if they eat until they are full and aren't at all in tune with their bodies. It's not for people who find comfort in control, but for people who can't get control when they need to.
When my eating gets out of hand, I use a ticksheet. Not just to avoid overeating, but to create balance; 3 servings protein, 2 servings dairy, 3 whole grain, 2 fruit, 4 vegetables, 2 fat, 80 oz water. When I eat a serving, I mark the ticksheet to make sure I get enough in each category and don't overdue any. Once I get back into a routine, I can do it more naturally without keeping track. I like this better than just calorie counting or food journaling because it's so simple and not time consuming and it's about balance, not reduction. (If someone was undereating and followed this, they would gain weight in a healthy way.)
Wow. I've been reading backward through posts when I can and am nowhere near January 2008. I'll get there…eventually.
Great post. Absolutely fabulous. I tried the food journal thing for a while, mainly while my wife was trying Weight Watchers before she got pregnant. Looking back on it, it kind of made me insane. I work with numbers day in and day out, and my caluclating WW points drove the wife insane, mostly because I memorized the points system calculation and can do it in my head. (Happy to divulge that WW secret formula if you e-mail me; link below). And what happened? I was always — ALWAYS — hungry. From morning through the night. Hungry, hungry, hungry. Once she got pregnant, the WW went away and so did the points calculating. So thankful for that.
Joshua
The Technical Parent
Love this post! And I really appreciate you running some of these classics again, because even when I've read them before, they've managed to fade from memory. When I read them again they feel new and fresh and I don't recognize that I've seen them until the end!
I'm so glad you made your peace with food journaling!
For me, a food journal worked great as a short term weight-loss technique, because when I started I was eating too much of the wrong foods and letting the portions get out of control. I'd do it again if I noticed my more casual style of just trying to eat a lot of healthy stuff was slipping into gluttony again.
But I totally get why it doesn't work for everyone!
I'm that weird person who can take it or leave it. A food journal started me down the ED road, but keeping a food journal for the nutritionist to see (and wanting to be honest) went a long way towards helping my recovery.
I don't do it now. If I start getting nervous about going back to the ED, I'll write it for a day, to prove I'm still okay.
Very poignant story, Charlotte!
I've always used portion control. Of course, I educated myself on the basic calorie content of foods.
I tried to start a food journal, but realized that it would only make me obsessive about food… These days I also keep a gratitude journal and it really is a blessing to me.
Great post!
I've tried food journals about a million times but always gave up after a couple of days because it really stressed me out. I love the idea of a gratitude journal!!
I think your recycled posts are classics! I love them.
I just wish I'd know it was a pre-loved post when I started reading. I kept thinking "It's Tuesday? Wasn't it just Tuesday the other day? Man, I really need more coffee!" 🙂
I'm just too obsessive about food already. "Normally" it's emotional or compulsive eating. When I journal, I go so far the other way it's rediculous. It makes it all about the food and gives food the power, so to speak. I admire people that can do it without going nutzo, but for me…I can't.
I love the idea of a gratitude journal. I think I will have to start that.
I've never been able to do a food journal…it gets all wierd and obsessy. I know what I have eaten…I don't delude myself. With me, it's all about portions. I think a scale would do me far more good.
If you're just starting out with weight loss or improving the quality of food you eat, I think it's useful to measure everything and write it down FOR A SHORT PERIOD OF TIME, maybe a month, just to make you aware of portion sizes and calories and nutrients.
After that, maybe one or two days of journalling a month just to check your progress and make sure your portion sizes aren't creeping.
Anything more than that, and it just makes you think about food all the time.
I really enjoyed this post. Thanks for recycling! I'm new to your blog and have yet to read the archives.
I think food journaling is helpful for people who have no awareness of their intakes.
I do not think it's helpful for people who tend to become obsessive.
I actually kept notebook food journals for 10 years but still can not bear to throw them away. Nor can I bear to look at them. I was really distracted from every day life by the journal too, even though I was not as detailed or strict as you were. I hated the pressure I would feel to eat a certain way "for the food journal."
Anyway, thanks again for your story!
I think keeping a food journal really works because you can't kid yourself – its there in black and white.
So glad to know that I am not the only one that has fun and games with excel. I started a food journal on paper, tried some web programs and ended up with my own excel program that slices and diced. I was spending more time on that than exercising and gaining weight so I ditched it.
What an amazing post! Thx you Charlotte since I am not a 2008 reader!!! I love your "what I am thankful for journal". How cool & great for kids to learn too!
As for journaling, although I do believe that it does have its place for many people that "fool themselves" & know it or don't know it, it is something that can be used as a tool at first & then a person can learn to understand what does & does not work for them & actually how much & what they are eating. It has been proven to work for certain people.
As for me, I only logged food when I was bodybuilding but that whole process taught me how much I should eat vs. too little eating & what foods worked & did not work for me. I now understand what & how much I am eating, I know portion sizes & portion control. I don't need to log food & have not for years. I do measure out new foods to my program though at first just so I know what a portion size is. Once I learn that, no more!
Thx again Charlotte!
I loved this post. I can see why it would be crazy-making to some, but it really helped me. Mine quickly evolved to more of a general health "tick-sheet" like Shelly describes (blood glucose tracking, food, medication/supplements, exercise, and misc. items). I had to track a lot of health info for people when I was newly diagnosed with diabetes last year and trying to wrap my head around all the things I needed to do to get healthy again.
And I love the idea of a gratitude journal! I need to start doing that.
Like Joshua, I went overboard with the Points system while on WW (all 3 times!!!)
While some folks can journal and not be pulled into disordered behavior, I'm not one of them. It takes me right back into my bulimia mindset.
Wow, I cannot believe that you can do all those Excel calculations in your head. Seriously, it's like a missed calling hiding in there. Not sure if that was what I was supposed to get out of this post, but what can I say? I'm easily impressed by mathematical prowess and the opportunity to make pithy responses myself.
I love this post Charlotte. Deb told me about it a while ago, and was such an eye opener. I'm so glad you recycled it as I think so many women could benefit from reading this.
Thank you!
I thought about keeping a journal, and may have tried for a day or two, but no calorie counts, just what. I eat too much unprocessed food, have to make very rough approximations if I can figure the stuff out at all. I agree, probably is useful for those who think they eat 1500 but eat 3500, but not for those of us who are following intuitive eating, whatever that means for us.
I still find it doesn't take much time away from my day to log my food, and I think it's helpful for me. However, I don't let it control my life. Once-in-a-lifetime foods come up, and I go over what I'm supposed to. Some days, I've logged almost 3000 calories, sighed, and went onto the next day resolving to be better. It's just another tool for me to use in figuring out what the heck is going on with my body. I can see how it can get obsessive though…
I still maintain it is the only thing that took me from 265 to right about 170. From then on, I've kinda had to find my own way.
Thank you.
I've been counting calories, writing food journals, fasting, binging, and basically being sick of myself, for the past, I don't know, 5 years. I'm only 23. It feels like prison. NO MORE. Today, I'm throwing away my food journal and NEVER GOING BACK.
Thank you.
Sometimes it takes a huge event like that (and also sad, finding your grandmother's journals about what she ate 40+ years before) to shock us into change. I'm glad that event had such an impact on you, and yes, I think that writing down everything we eat can be the WRONG idea for a lot of people. It's okay for a while, for people who don't realize how much they're eating, but for eating-disordered people it can be a trigger.
I agree that food journaling can get out of hand. I've recently started more of an emotion recording food journal though, as I struggle with stress eating and such, and when my emotions are really out of control, I tend to revert to my previous bulimic behaviors. So I don't record calories or anything as this can be triggering, but I write down what I ate, how I feel about it, if I think I was eating because I was really hungry, etc. I've found this to be immensely helpful and quite mentally healthy for me. I've also journaled where I counted calories and all of that before, and that definitely got obsessive and was not healthy. New to your blog and loving it!
I can well understand how OCD-type behaviours can be triggered by logging. On the other hand, counting calories and learning about portion sizes (for the first time) is what got me under 170 for the first time in ten years (with a top weight of 200). A natural glutton (in the best sense – I’m still a foodie), I had been wildly underestimating my food intake.
But even I – a person not known for her self-discipline – had periods of obsessive counting. I think I’ve managed to find a balance now that I’ve reached my goal weight. I’m not anywhere near as emotionally attached to the numbers as I was when I was desperate to lose ‘pounds’. I’m eating at ‘maintenance’ – in moderation.
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