You should track everything you eat. There’s nothing new in that statement if you’re overweight. You’ve heard it from doctors and dieticians, read it in books and, yes, blogs. It’s just another example of the punitive nature of the weight loss process, right? Just some other way we’re meant to punish ourselves for being overweight in some futile attempt to correct this grave character flaw we have:  We cannot be trusted with food, and we must be monitored at all times.

Even when the concept is presented with a helpful smile, we still KNOW it’s a punishment because we’ve not been told otherwise.  Until right now.  Trust me when I say this, I can’t speak for all those who have been trying to get you to track you food in the past, but tracking food is your best friend, and a huge part of a plan to CELEBRATE your decision to make a positive change in your life and lose some weight.   It’s just that no one ever thought to explain it to you before.

Past Tracking Failure: Martyr or Liar?

Someone asks you to track you food on a two week “trial basis”… although the way it’s asked, you’re pretty certain you’ve already been found guilty in this trial and the tracking is your sentence.  But fine, you want to lose weight, so you play along.  You do so by choosing one of two roles, “martyr” or “liar”. 

You could choose to be the “martyr” and basically eat a mostly vegetable based diet with the occasional protein thrown in to keep you from passing out for two weeks.  And so, while you may be 150 pounds overweight, at the end of this trial period you’d proudly present the food journal that would have been kept by a 105-pound supermodel.  Shockingly, this particular food tracking exercise would not prove helpful.

If you choose “liar” you may have considered “martyr” but then realized, how will this person actually KNOW what I ate for these two weeks?  So you’ll continue to eat the way you like, but you’ll create a completely fictitious journal that only makes it APPEAR that you ate like a 105-pound supermodel.   Or maybe you’re aiming for a bit more believably, so you throw in a pretend “cheat day” or two with you fantasy.  Either way, this trial run also fails miserably.

Past Tracking Failure: The “Best Self” Disaster

There is another trap some of us fall into, especially if we’ve been asked to undertake this punishment by someone we like or respect.  Wanting to impress them, we might try to tighten to eat exactly the way we think we’re supposed to eat for this two week trial.  Control our portions, no sweets, more fruits and veggies, etc.  Nothing wrong with eating that way of course. But it’s just as much of a fantasy as the “martyr” and “liar” trials.

Because, what happens when someone who needs to lose a great deal of weight present a completely warped snapshot of the supposed diet that has led them to being grossly overweight in the first place?  Your doctor or nutritionist will look to make changes based on THAT… meaning they will direct you to become even MORE restrictive than the already overly restrictive food fantasy journal you submitted.  Again, the result is inevitable failure.

 Tracking as Data, Not Punishment

These tracking failures are all understandable, as they stem from our reactions to being “punished” with an assignment of food tracking.  But you need to realize that tracking your food is nothing but data collection that helps you in your quest to weigh less.  There’s no judgement in this data, nor is there anything punitive in the act of making us do the tracking.  The tracking is just for us, as a tool.  And while I admit in the beginning it might take you a bit of time to get your tracking system down, once you get rolling?  This is something that you will spend as few as five minutes a day doing.  And it may be the most important five minutes of your day when it comes to weight loss, as I will explain.

Discovering Your Eating Baseline Through Tracking

One thing that those who’ve pushed tracking on us in the past had correct – it is important to do a trial run of a few weeks before pursuing a weight loss plan.  But the “martyr”, the “liar” the “best-self” versions of tracking? You have to forget those. Instead, you have to simply track what you eat, as you eat now… without making any changes. Again, there’s no judgement here.  You’re simply trying to something you’ve probably never had before — a full picture of what you eat. 

You’re eventually going to make changes to your diet, and the easiest way to do that will be to look back on everything you’ve eaten at the end of the trial period and highlight certain food items that might be ripe for changes.  You can’t do that without a full, honest picture of how you eat now.   Think of your tracking as your food MRI.

Honesty is the key.  There’s no special place in your stomach for food eaten off someone else’s plate.  There’s no rule that food eaten on Saturday’s doesn’t “count” for some reason.  Track everything, you’ll be glad you did.

How To Track What You Eat

The actual method of tracking is up to you.  I’d strongly recommend the free app My Fitness Pal (www.myfitnesspal.com, or in the app store).  I’ve really enjoyed it because it’s easy to look up food, it’s easy to build recipes you use repeatedly, search food directly from restaurants, and more.  In fact I’m trying to make all the recipes I post here so that they will import directly into your app if you use it.

That being said, there are other apps available, as well as good old fashioned notepads and journals. Just be patient with yourself the first few days, as it takes a bit of time to get the hang of whatever method you chose.

You Can Stop Tracking After A Few Months… But You Shouldn’t

I assumed that after I started losing weight and got the hang of things, I’d stop leaning on the crutch of tracking.  But the thing is, I found it so very useful.  Again tracking is data.  And the longer you do it, the better you get at it, the more data you collect.

If you’re using an app, you’ll be able to watch not just your daily and weekly calorie intake, but what percentage of those calories come from protein, carbs and fat.  Why is this helpful? Well, after the initial burst of weight loss, no matter what you do, the pace of weight loss will slow down.  You will even hit weight loss plateaus.

If you are no longer tracking your food, you simply need to trust that you’re still keeping with your personal program and hope that the plateau ends at some point.  If, however, you are still tracking? You can confidently look at your food intake and compare it to past weeks.  If you see that you’re still meeting your caloric goals, and that your ratios are still where you want them to be, then you’ll KNOW that you’re just in a plateau and this allows you to relax and just keep doing what you’re doing.

Keeping You On Track Long Term

There are times, however, when the data doesn’t paint a complete picture.  A few months ago I was in a plateau that had lasted more than three weeks.  Because I track daily I was able to look at my intake and I saw nothing different.  So I wasn’t worried.  But when it continued for another two weeks, I got a bit concerned. 

One option I had was to take a fresh look at my current diet and see if it was time for some additional changes, but I didn’t think that was it.  But since I knew what I was eating was not the problem, and my levels of activity were consistent as well, I couldn’t find an issue.

Until I looked a bit closer.  The issue, it turns out, was “human error.”  I realized that I’d been getting a bit sloppy when it came to tracking the amount of a snack food I was eating.  It was something that I used to meticulously count out piece by piece, but over the last few months I started to just ballpark it, to the point where I realized I was now eating about 2 ½ servings per day instead of the one I was logging.  That was amounting to about 1,600 extra calories per week, or an ADDITIONAL DAY of food.

Had I not been tracking my food, and been able to eliminate so many other variables I’m not sure I’d have caught this.  But as soon as I did? I dropped three pounds in the next week.  And in the process reconfirmed my commitment to tracking my food on a daily basis.

I know it’s hard to break the cycle of assuming that food tracking is some sort of punishment, but that’s only because no one has ever explained to us that it’s actually a tool meant to empower and help us be more confident and less stressed about our weight loss.  I sincerely hope you add it your toolbox as you create your personal weight loss program.