Those who are intentionally lying. This is the smallest category, representing far fewer individuals than the next.
Those who are expecting judgement from a coach/authority figure. This may not necessarily apply to you personally, rather someone you may help at some point – though of course it can have its applications to ourselves if we use a method of food tracking which is public (many slimming clubs which encourage sharing of food diaries find their members fall victim to this, as do online communities or apps which make your food intake public).
Here the problem is that someone will eat something and won’t want to show someone what they have eaten, in case that person thinks less of them for being weak or in fact punishes them in some capacity.
To get past this, there are two options which aren’t mutually exclusive. First a relationship between the tracker and the authority figure(s) needs to be one which is open, honest and non-judgemental so that slip ups can be reported for the purpose of gathering data and not for the purpose of ‘owning up to your sins’. Secondly there could be a period of time where food reporting is kept private. If you have a coach then this may not be an option but if you track using an app which makes your profile public, consider making it private.
Those embarrassed about what they eat. This point is similar to the first but with one difference. The person who misreports isn’t lying to someone else – they are lying to themselves. Maybe they miss some foods off of their diary because they don’t want to look at it, or simply don’t track days which aren’t on plan.
This is self-evidently counterproductive as if you do this you are providing yourself with false data to work from and leave two potential outcomes: either you forget that the data is incorrect and make bad decisions, or you remember that it’s incorrect and simply won’t trust it, therefore undermining the entire process of food reporting at the most basic level.
Whether the subject is yourself or a client, someone making a food diary needs to try to view data as objectively as possible and dissociate themselves from any emotionally or morally driven beliefs surrounding it. The food diary someone has collected and amount of calories they have eaten shouldn’t be any more of a point of embarrassment than someone’s resting heart rate. It’s just numbers from which decisions and changes can be made.
Those who don’t value accuracy and don’t believe it matters. This is of vital importance – if you are tracking food with any kind of method, make sure you track everything that you eat and drink. That spoon of peanut butter you ate while making a sandwich counts just as much as the meal does, and the biscuit you ate from the tin at work counts too.
Similarly, if someone has eaten well 6 days in a week but poorly one day, that one day matters a lot – tracking only the highlights can’t direct you properly, and someone can consume a lot of calories in one day.
If you don’t track accurately, you are falsifying data which will impact your decisions later down the line. If your boss estimated your working hours and didn’t think the extra 45 minutes you stayed behind three times this week mattered you would be annoyed – the same principle holds true with counting calories.
Those who track accurately, until they go off plan. Are you noticing a pattern yet? Many people will track their food accurately while things are going well, but then will either skip a day or fill things out with what they ‘wish’ they had eaten, after they go for a meal with friends and get the pizza, or cave in and order a takeaway without making more sensible choices.
Those who are prone to eating extremely well and then binging often do the same thing. While this can make someone’s food diary look better, they are providing themselves with data which can later enforce poor decisions. If 2 weeks down the line no weight has been lost and they know that their diary doesn’t actually reflect the facts, then what should we actually change?
If this is you or a client, and you’d really rather not fully list everything you have eaten then it can still be prudent to add something to your diary so you remember that you didn’t have a great day, because if progress hasn’t been what you’d rather it was, then this is where your attention should be directed; and if you forget the frequency with which this happens, how do you know when you’re doing better?
Those who don’t know what’s in food. This is probably the single biggest factor (especially for healthy foods) and is one reason why you should always be sure to check the labels and understand what it is you are eating. If you are looking to add vegetables to a meal be sure to know the difference between starchy and non-starchy vegetables. If you choose a lower fat or ‘Healthy’ version of something, don’t assume that it’s low calorie, always check. Reading labels or checking online for foods which have no listed nutritional information on the packet (i.e. buying steak from a butcher) will help you to make more informed choices and know what is in your food. Ruling this out is one of the biggest benefits to an initial macronutrient and/or calorie controlled approach.
Those who don’t report there and then but use recalls. By recording your food as you go (for example using the ideas we will list below) you can be sure to remember everything you have eaten, but that’s not the case if you try to remember every mouthful you’ve gone through in the last 12 hours or so.
Think carefully – what snacks did you have 3 days ago? Did you have a mouthful of anything while looking in the fridge, or take a chocolate when offered at work last week?
These questions are hard to answer and the research seems to suggest that they are commonly answered incorrectly. Don’t leave things up to chance, track before or immediately after you eat something. The absolute best means of applying this is to stick to a plan, set out for the week ahead of time, but this isn’t realistic 100% of the time when life and its intricate problems get in the way, so tracking as you go is a good idea.
Those who eat mindlessly. This topic will be fully explained in a later module, but for now we will introduce it – the idea that most of people’s decisions around food are made consciously is palpably false. We have already gone over the information around hedonic tendencies, hyper-palatable food reward and the drivers to overeat which are associated with being served larger portions, but it goes much further than that.
If you eat while distracted, while watching TV, working, surfing social media and even driving, you will not notice how much you eat, how fast you eat or how full you are after the meal. In short, eating while distracted or eating mindlessly can lead someone to eat more than they think, and forget just how much they’ve gone through.
On top of this your environment can also have a large impact. Do you have a biscuit jar or a bowl of sweets somewhere? While cooking are you prone to tasting food? We often eat food that is close to us without realising, so pay attention.
Always be mindful and think about the food you are eating while you are eating it. Food is there to be enjoyed – don’t miss out on the experience.
Those who don’t know how to track food properly. And finally, we have the most obvious category, how are people supposed to accurately record what they have eaten in the first place?
Let’s look at some basic ideas.