A Food Diary

I know you are busy with countless things, running around all day trying to get everything done. The result: no time to rest, and no time to sit down for a proper meal, let alone a balanced one. When you grab bites here and there, the first, if not the main, casualty of this lively, overloaded lifestyle is your nutrition and health. After several years of endlessly chasing lost time and the lifestyle it imposes, you discover quite a few extra kilograms accompanied by digestive problems.

Hand on your stomach: are you aware of everything you put in your mouth during the day?

To learn exactly what you eat, draw the right conclusions, and tailor the solutions you need, you must write it down, and I mean write down everything. The bite you took from your child's sandwich (and how many times a day you do that), the leftovers you finished from their dinner (and their siblings' dinners, and exactly what was on those plates), how many handfuls of pretzels you took from the refreshments at an office meeting, and how many half-bourekas or rugelach pastries you swallowed absentmindedly.

What will you discover?

You will discover that you ate when you were upset, sad, happy, or visiting someone, despite not being hungry. Eating without hunger is always unnecessary eating. The counterargument is, "I ate my child's leftover sandwich when I was hungry." But was that the meal you planned for yourself? Probably not. More likely, you were just about to sit down to a meal when your child arrived with sandwich leftovers that were "a shame to throw away." Then they "disappeared." Where? That is exactly what a food diary reveals: you ate your child's sandwich (about 200 kcal), followed by the meal you had planned. Later, you finished the "pizza crust" another child left (about another 100 kcal), took a "bite" of your husband's bourekas (about 30 kcal), nibbled cookies a neighbor brought for afternoon coffee (about 200 kcal), and after dinner, which you also grazed on while hovering over your dining family, finished with a small handful of seeds (about 500 kcal). Without noticing, you consumed more than 1000 unnecessary kcal. You did not particularly enjoy them, they did not offer much nutritional value, but they came on top of the meals you had planned to eat.

Needless to say, people often do not eat regular meals made up of foods with appropriate nutritional value, such as vegetables, fruit, fermented dairy products, and so on, because there is no longer enough appetite or motivation to prepare them. Snacking has "blocked" the appetite. How do I know all this? Reviewing hundreds of food diaries during my years as a dietitian taught me what they can reveal.

Another important thing a reliable food diary reveals is the nutritional value of the foods eaten. For example, someone with constipation should eat fiber-rich foods such as whole-wheat and bran bread, oats, and plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables. In practice, it turns out they do not plan sufficiently ahead and end up eating a deli sandwich made with a regular-flour roll, bourekas at an important meeting, and drinking plenty of coffee, tea, and cola rather than the water their body needs.

Interestingly, our memory is selective. It remembers what we want to remember and forgets what makes us uncomfortable. Keeping a food diary is therefore the most effective way to record the true picture of eating during the day without relying on memory.

Earlier, we mentioned eating for emotional reasons , such as boredom or irritability. An "emotional eating diary" reveals these behavioral patterns so you can work on them with a professional.

In short, a food diary provides an accurate "mirror" of our eating habits.

How do you keep a food diary?

The best approach is to record in real time: eat, then write it down. This gives the greatest accuracy. Enter the requested information in each column as honestly as possible. In effect, it is a kind of journalistic investigation, conducted as objectively as possible, without judgment, concealment, or adjustment for whoever might read it. A food diary should also note hunger levels, how you feel after eating, and the reasons for eating beforehand. You can also track bowel movements.

It is important to keep a food diary for several days, 7-10 days. This gives a sense of eating behavior on weekdays, Fridays, Saturdays, holidays, special occasions, and so on. Every situation has its own challenges.

Then, what do we do with all this information?

Once we have kept the diary, we can begin studying it. We can analyze it ourselves and learn about our eating habits. For example, it may reveal that the office is the most problematic place for eating: cakes and sweetened drinks are served, and people sit in meetings eating together. That is something to work on later with a professional. However, looking into such an honest mirror alone is usually difficult, and professional help is recommended. A dietitian or health coach can certainly help analyze the wealth of information in the diary.

How is this done? Write down all the insights from the diary, summarize what needs to change, examine how to change it, and start building a personally appropriate healthy diet, based on the diary's information. Start practicing that diet, continuing to use a food diary if helpful. In the example above, suppose consultation identifies skipping breakfast, hunger, and insufficient planning time as the reasons for unbalanced office eating. The alternative the person develops is to get up 5-10 minutes earlier, make a sandwich for themselves while preparing the children's sandwiches, and organize food to eat at the office throughout the day. This prevents hunger and greatly reduces the likelihood of eating other things. Continuing the diary can help establish the habit.

This is general news information and is not a substitute for personal advice from a doctor or dietitian.