Food is a very emotional subject for everyone. Criticizing someone's eating habits is like insulting someone's mother. We are all very attached to what we eat and why. And we all have lots of justifications for eating the way we do. And let me say, I am not attacking your eating habits. But I am telling you to keep a food diary.
This might seem like an innocuous request, but after telling a few people that they might want to write down what they consume on a daily basis, here were a list of the immediate responses:
I'M TOO BUSY TO EAT WELL!!
I'M MORALLY OPPOSED TO LOOKING LIKE A FUSSY EATER!!
I DON'T HAVE FOOD ALLERGIES!!
Any nutritionist will tell you that this is one of the hardest things to get their patients to do - to get them to honestly make a list of the things they eat from the time they wake to the time they sleep. Usually because the list contradicts whatever your internal story is, or it exacerbates whatever guilt or shame you have attached to your eating habits.
Keeping a food diary is not about trying to get skinny, and it isn't even necessarily about trying to get you to eat healthy. The goal is for you to make connections between what you put in your body and how you feel, thereby creating your own personal mind-body narrative. This kind of getting-to-know-you exercise can be a real mindblower - not because you find out things that you didn't know at all, but that it makes more explicit things that you have been suspecting for years.
BUT WHAT IF I FIND OUT I CAN'T EAT ICE CREAM/FRIED PORK RINDS/WALL PLASTER WITH OUT GETTING A MIGRAINE/RASH/BRAIN DAMAGE?
Well, what if? That choice is yours to make. But, at least now you know what the choice is, and because you are a Fabulous Grown Up, you can decide what you want to do.
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