Another Honest Food Diary

Last week I shared a new approach I am trying to my life. One huge hurdle I want to overcome is my negative relationship with food. I have been so focused on restricting myself and implementing impossible rules just to turn around and a few days later (in some cases the same day) after a junk food binge hating myself because I can’t understand why I don’t have the will power to stick to my plan.

The truth is, I have stopped listening to my body and I’ve been trying to force her to do things she clearly doesn’t want to do. I need to strip things way back to basics and learn what it is to actually feel hungry and energize and nourish my body with foods that make her feel good. Part of me is a tiny bit skeptical that I’m just going to allow myself to inhale all the junk food but the theory behind intuitive eating and living a life free of dieting rules is that if you get back in tune with your body, she’ll tell you what she needs to feel her best. You just have to learn to listen.

In order to begin this practice I felt like revisiting the idea of an honest food diary was a great place to start. An overview of your eating habits can tell you a lot. I wrote about my honest food diary last year, but this time I wanted to go a little further. Along with logging the food I was eating, I wanted to pay close attention to how I was feeling before, during, and after eating. Since adding this aspect to my journaling I have seen a few patterns show up.

It should come as no surprise that if emotions are involved; food is the first thing that I turn to for comfort. Unfortunately, the majority of the food I turn to for comfort is food that does not make me feel good and usually I end up feeling worse. Boredom and low energy were also contributing factors in my eating patterns.

One last thing that I noticed is that if I skip breakfast or eat a gut bomb, my eating pattern for the rest of the day is more sporadic and I eat more of the foods that do not make me feel great. It’s almost like I just say “Eff it” to the rest of the day by “ruining” it first thing in the morning.

Like I said in my last post that I’ve come to the realization that I can’t remember the last time I was even truly hungry. What I can remember is the last time I binged on junk food because I am still feeling the guilt from it even though it was days ago. It’s time for me to let that lingering guilt go.

I always find that if I plan ahead even just a little, I am more motivated to stick to that plan and eat foods that make me feel great so more planning is something I am going to get back to. I want to develop pantry staples and fresh ingredients that we always have on hand for a variety of our go to recipes. My days of restricting and cutting out entire food groups are over. I am hoping to get energized and use that energy to focus on the personal development I am working on.