Should You Track What You Eat?
Most of us eat unconsciously with little to no awareness of our actual hunger needs. This makes it very easy to overeat junk absentmindedly and very difficult to get actual satisfaction or satiation from the foods we consume.
In fact, when asked to keep a food journal for as little as three days, most people are shocked to see how much low-nutrient, high-calorie food ends up on their plate and how little nutrient-dense, real food they consume. A handful of this here and a bite of that there doesn’t seem detrimental at the time, but it really does all add up!
For many of us struggling with low energy, irritable moods, and a waistline that just won’t budge, tracking what we eat can be the wake-up call we need to shift into better eating habits. When we take the time to track our daily food intake, we can bring awareness to overlooked, seemingly inconsequential eating patterns. Just the simple act of paying attention to what we are eating makes a big difference in improving our food choices. When we are asked to pay attention, we consciously make better decisions.
Tracking what we eat can also help us identify and understand when, where, and with whom we make the worst food choices. Often when we are in social situations with people that have poor eating habits, we mimic their behaviours as a primal social cue to fit in with the tribe. When we are under fatigue or distress, we reliably reach for more calorie-dense options as a natural response to the flight/fight trigger.
Identifying the conditions and circumstances where we are most likely to make our worst choices allows us to prepare for future opportunities to do better. In every potential scenario, creating a plan to fall back on can help support us in making the choices we want for a better health future.
This can also work in the inverse as tracking our food can help us understand where we win and with whom. Amplifying these circumstances and people in our lives can strongly shift our health choices in a positive direction if we feed into them more regularly. For example, if we are more likely to eat well after a workout with a fellow health-conscious friend, then rewarding that behaviour by engaging with it more often is a win-win.
Food logging is so much more than just mapping our eating behaviours, but also tracks our calorie and nutrient consumption quite neatly. While the precise accuracy of various food logging tools is not an exact science, having a better picture of our caloric and nutrient load helps determine where we can do better to accelerate our progress.
By tracking our macro- and micronutrients, we get a clearer picture of what each meal looks like in numbers that help us work toward eating a “more balanced diet”. Without numbers, it can be difficult to understand exactly what that means, but with tailored nutrient ranges, it becomes easier to fill in the nutritional gaps on which we may be falling short.
Increased awareness of what we are actually eating — not just what we intend to eat — is often the most powerful catalyst for changing behaviour. As we gain understanding about the breakdown of our food, we get a better understanding of portion sizes, nutritional gaps, and how to still enjoy the foods we love while making progress toward our goals.
Tracking what we eat is meant to empower us by giving us the tools to manage nutrition well without a meal plan. That being said, it is a process to learn and it does take a small investment of time to get acquainted with the numbers that will work best for each of us.
It is worth mentioning that food tracking is not a great fit for everyone. For those suffering from body dysmorphia or disordered eating, tracking food can be very triggering. Although the goal is to work toward food freedom, it is easy to get obsessed over perfection in numbers, which simply does not exist.
The purpose of tracking food is to educate ourselves on the nutritional breakdown of food so that we can continue to eat what we love with enough moderation that we can still hit our long-term goals. This is much easier when we have a robust awareness and accountability to which actions we are actually taking versus those that we often fool ourselves to believe.
The truth of the matter is that we often over-estimate our positive health behaviours and really underestimate the poorer choices we are apt to make. With a little more conscious effort, not only can we empower ourselves with priceless nutritional know-how, but we can also learn to shift our habits to reflect the health behaviours we aspire to embody.
If this sounds too good to be true, don’t limit your beliefs as it really can work for you, too! With the assistance of a certified nutrition professional, you can learn the tools to manage your diet, without actually dieting. If you’ve ever felt frustrated, overwhelmed, or just plain exhausted with all the “food rules”, consider the relative simplicity of understanding food tracking and the liberation from conventional diets.
In the end, the ultimate victory is to stop fighting with our mind and body. By taking accountability for what we eat, we are taking our power back and sitting in the control centre for our own health goals once again. Understanding our individual, unique response to nutrition liberates us to manage our health goals independently and sustainably over time. While it might be a small investment of effort upfront, it is but a fraction of work in the scope of the true food freedom and self-awareness that we gain for life.
You just read another post from In Fitness And In Health: a health and fitness community dedicated to sharing knowledge, lessons, and suggestions to living happier, healthier lives.
If you’d like to join our newsletter and receive more stories like this one, tap here.
