Can You Remember What You Ate Three Days Ago?

Yeah, I can’t either. That’s why I keep a food diary.

Why bother, you ask.

It helps me to maintain my nutrition goals. Here’s how:

1. ACCOUNTABILITY

This is huge and is the crux where goal meets success. More than anything you just need to be accountable TO YOURSELF. When you can be honest, on paper, with yourself then you have taken THE MOST IMPORTANT step to making true change.

Many people don’t want to admit to themselves what they eat & drink day after day. Somehow if it doesn’t get recorded, it doesn’t count. It if can be forgotten, then it can be ignored. So much of what we wrestle with health-wise is just denial in disguise.

I keep my food diary online for anyone to see. I do this because, as a food coach, I want prospective & current clients to see that I live what I teach. I walk my talk. Yet my food days are imperfect. Even I don’t follow my GoldenEighty20™ Method to the letter. It’s ok, because overall I’m satisfied with how I eat & drink, I’m please with my health, wellness, physique, fitness & outlook. If I weren’t, I’d know where to look to make changes.

2. PATTERNS

I can see clearly that I get into food ruts. Whether this is a problem or not, I’m not sure. I LOVE LOVE LOVE my breakfast of green matcha tea, a big banana-mango-pineapple smoothie and SeaSnax roasted seaweed. Seriously, I’m giddy thinking about it before I go to bed at night and I pop up in the morning knowing that breakfast is soon to happen.

Eating this breakfast every morning for months on end…is that a problem? Some might say that I need variety. Some might consider it just plain boring. I figure I’ll just keep going with it until the appeal wears off.

If I were to develop a vitamin or mineral deficiency (usually indicated by unusual cravings), I could easily study my diary and see where I could be eating differently. If I found myself losing or gaining too much weight, I could count some calories and see where I need to edit based on my activity level. (It would probably be smart to include exercise notes within my food diary because higher activity days can lead to greater hunger.)

Currently I do not count calories nor precisely weigh or measure food. If I know the container size in which I put a smoothie or tea, I’ll note that. I don’t measure out food before putting it into a bowl. However, I could start doing this if my dietary efforts were not producing the results I desired.

3. AWARENESS

For years I’ve been fascinated by memory. Young children live in the here and now without thinking about the past or future and that’s why they can’t remember their early childhood later in life. It’s not until we begin reaching back or projecting forward do we develop memories.

I’ve often wondered if spiritual gurus who are very good about living in the present moment have any recollection of their weeks, months or years. I notice that when I’m being a really good…I mean REALLY good…listener and I’m truly listening to someone speak without having my own simultaneous thoughts, that I then can not remember later what was being told to me. This often happens too with movies & books…I’m so engaged in the story and I’m thinking of nothing else. The moment passes in, then out of, me.

Like when I am so in the here and now listening well to a story and I can’t remember later what took place, eating is like this for me. Nothing gets us into the present moment quite like food. It’s exciting, delicious, fun, comforting & totally in the moment. We’re breathing in smells, anticipating tastes & satiation, feeling textures, mixing flavors, watching things melt, ooze and crumble. Eating delights all senses, engages all aspects of our aliveness and then POOF it’s over and you wonder what just happened.

Or is that just me?

I get so caught up in the eating moment…in the pure joy of eating…that I don’t always remember a meal. And that’s another reason why I write it down: pure documentation because my recall is often useless…especially after a couple of days go by.

If you’re wanting to get nutritionally honest with yourself, start a food diary. If you want to see where you can make changes to get closer to your wellness goals, start a food diary. Write down every morsel of food and every sip of drink that you intake. It will seem tedious at first yet after the habit develops, it will then feel odd not to record your intake.

With all the nifty photo apps on the market, keeping a food diary can be as easy as snapping a photo before you take a bite or drink and then compiling the images in one place.

It’s not necessary to make your food diary public. You can if you need the support of friends or family to help you stay accountable to yourself, but make sure this tactic doesn’t then create a situation of guilt or shame and cause you to sneak food or under-report your intake.