Logging Food? STOP this to Start Your Journey to Food Freedom

People ask me all the time if they need to log their food using an app like myfitnesspal?

I usually answer sort of sarcastically by saying I don’t advise my clients to do something that I wouldn’t do.

But in all seriousness, logging and tracking food is not fun.  It’s time consuming, tedious and often we underestimate the volume/portion size we eat.  Or we only track/log our food on days we know we ate healthy.  So for most people it doesn’t provide a good snapshot of what we really eat in a day.

Secondly, when you tell yourself to track, how long does it really last?

You end up telling yourself you’ll track your food, then quit, then feel guilty about it

It’s just another diet culture tactic that sucks us into that diet cycle, ultimately leaving us feeling guilty when we don't maintain the routine long term.  

Ultimately, tracking is about calorie counting and in this week's podcast episode I describe why this is an unhelpful habit. 

Transcript of the Episode

Do you think you have to lug your food every time you're all in on a new diet plan? I'm here to tell you that you absolutely don't. And I'll discuss in this episode, why this can be more harmful than helpful. adventures and feeding my family is a weekly podcast discussing the challenges and fun around feeding your family healthy meals. I'm Andrea Heyman, and I've been a registered dietician for over 25 years. So I know the importance of good nutrition. But I'm also a mom of three so I understand the challenges and humor that comes along with trying to make this happen. In this podcast, I'll share my tips, tricks and menus, but also share the stories and food prep failures that come along the way to interview guests will discuss family food traditions, how to strengthen bonds around the family table, as well as their favorite family recipes. There isn't one right way to feed your family. But there are countless stories, you can take bits and pieces and learn from all of them. When I meet with people, it is so common that at some point in the conversation, they asked me, Do I need to log my food using an app like My Fitness Pal? I usually A A 053 Final Copy AIFMF Page 1 of 3 Transcribed by https://otter.aianswer some sort of sarcastic response. But saying, I really don't advise my clients to do something that I wouldn't do. They kind of look at me like I'm a little kooky. But I go into explain a lot of the reasons why I think it's not helpful. So first of all, logging and tracking food on one of those apps is not fun. It's time consuming, tedious. And often we underestimate the volume or the portion size that we eat. Or have you ever done this, you only track or log your food on the days that you know you ate really healthy. So for most people, it really doesn't provide a good snapshot of what we really eat. Secondly, when you tell yourself to track, how long does it really last, you make a plan to track yourself and track all your food, then you quit. And then inevitably you feel guilty about it. It's just another diet culture tactic that sucks us into that diet cycle. If you want to hear more about this, I go into that more in detail in Episode 43. And talk about diet, culture and diet cycle a lot more there. In just a second, we'll talk about why tracking is really counterproductive. But I do want to emphasize that if you're using tracking for short term, just to where raise awareness of your habits. So for example, if you keep a log or a journal, just to kind of raise awareness, and you realize that, oh, I always go for an afternoon snack at around three or four o'clock, then it can be helpful because raising that awareness is something that when we're trying to change our eating habits can be very, very a positive thing. But as long as you're doing this without needing a specific calorie goal or requirement, then tracking just for short term can be helpful. But that's typically not what we're doing. The tracking apps all provide a calorie goal. They use predictive equations to come up with this, but they don't know you specifically, your habits, your medical situation, your activity level. So it's really just a generalization. But I know so many folks who look at this this calorie number that it provides almost like it's a magic number. That's the biggest reason why I don't recommend using a food app is because we put so much focus on that calorie recommendation. And really, it encourages folks to focus on that number instead of focusing on our hunger cues are body's cues. How does food make us feel when we eat it, and how food nourishes us the calorie goal that's provided, you know, we're trying to beat that or come under that number. And so it really encourages us to focus on kind of an old mentality and old thinking of calories in calories out kind of mentality that if we are eating less than we're burning, then we're going to lose weight. And in the 80s and 90s our knowledge was that a calorie was a calorie was a calorie. But now we know that the body responds very differently depending on the type of food that is put in your body. So that just means that 100 calories of an apple is very different than 100 calories of potato chips. There's a significantly different physiologic response to eating each one of these foods. And that is very important. But when we simply focus on meeting a calorie recommendation, we put less emphasis on the actual food choices we're putting in our bodies. And that is really just such an important piece of information for general health and for weight loss, believe it or not, because those food choices that actual foods really do matter, for weight loss. When we focus on calorie intake, when we're logging our food, we don't always need that calorie recommendation, which can make us feel pretty lousy about ourselves. If you don't hit that right, or that magic number. Also, logging can really encourage restrictive eating. Let's say you eat a larger breakfast and lunch. And your tracking device indicates that you only have 250 calories left before you hit your calorie goal. Many folks might restrict their eating for the rest of the day, which of course can lead to an unhealthy cycle of under eating, followed by overeating. And ultimately, those are really bad feelings of failure. And really just not meeting our goals or feeling positive about it. That failure that you couldn't hit that calorie goal. And then we feel like we're not going to lose weight, or really can send you into a cycle of despair and negative feelings and cause you to throw in the towel on this newest weight loss effort. Oh my gosh, it's making me feel bad just talking about this. Finally, I believe that logging and tracking your food is really just not sustainable. There's such a big time commitment involved that it's not realistic to expect to do it long term. And if you're listening to me today, for the first time, if you get to know me a little bit better, or you have been following me for a while or listening to me while you know by now I'm all about adopting habits that you can easily maintain for long term. So in summary, I believe that tracking and logging your food intake is simply just another tactic promoted by traditional diet culture. And ditching this habit or tool is one way you can start on the path to food freedom. If you liked this episode, please share it with a friend rate it review it. That's how we get this word out and we help others on the path to food freedom and share our mission that we've begun together. Until next time, take care