Are food records useful? The answer depends on who’s doing the recording…and why.
As I’ve written on this site before, keeping track of what you’ve eaten can be helpful if you’re trying to lose—or keep from gaining—weight, But if you’re a nutrition researcher trying to see whether eating a certain food causes or helps prevent a disease, asking people to report what they ate may not be so helpful, although it’s the basis of most human nutrition research. A blog on the political site, 538, recently took up this dilemma, along with a hilarious video (well, hilarious to a geeky nutrition researcher like me, at least)!
When I was 29, I lost 40 pounds doing little more than writing down what I ate every day! I hope that got your attention! I didn’t start keeping food records as a way to lose weight; I did it to prove to the doctor that my increasing weight couldn’t possibly be due to what I was eating or how much exercise I was (not) getting! But when I honestly saw what I’d eaten the previous couple of days in black and white, I was shocked! No wonder I’d gained all that weight over the past few years and wasn’t losing a pound, in spite of my firm belief I was starving myself!
Food Records are Challenging! I’m not going to lie: keeping food records isn’t easy! But the difficulty isn’t what you might think, and don’t worry, I’ll give you some helpful tips on measuring amounts in just a minute. Keeping meticulously accurate food records requires measuring—or very accurately estimating—the portion sizes of foods we consume and then consulting a data source for the calories. If we’re eating anything more “prepared” than a piece of fresh fruit, things can get complicated. Think: hidden calories in all those secret sauces…
But, in my case, I did minimal measuring and looked up calorie counts only when I was curious. For me, the challenges were 2-fold: stopping to write down what I’d eaten before I conveniently forgot…AND admitting to myself on paper what I’d really eaten!!! Of course I could underestimate or outright lie to myself – but what good would that do (kind of like cheating at golf!)?
Data are Gold! Writing down what I ate, as carefully as I could without exhaustive weighing, measuring, and doing research gave me accountability (remember this was before the days of smartphone apps like MyFitnessPal). It also gave me reams of data on where and when I tended to eat what, so I could start to figure out where to make some changes. And data are gold! Data give you the information you need to figure out–not just guess–what really works for you, what doesn’t, and what to maybe try instead. For example, data can tell you in black and white that you make terrible choices at all-you-can-eat buffets: I don’t mean all of you, I mean you personally, if that happens to be your Achilles heel. Data are what let you personalize your diet to exactly what you need to do to lose and maintain your weight!
Welcome to the World of Food Measuring. And today, smartphone apps make keeping food records 10,000 times easier and more informative than ever. With nothing but an iPhone app, you can look up the calorie contents of thousands of foods and record what you ate. Actually measuring the amounts is more challenging but remembering a few rules of thumb (so to speak) makes it a lot easier, for example:
Your upper thumb joint is about a tablespoon,
Your balled fist is about a cup,
An ounce of cheese is about the size of a golf ball (100 calories),
3 ounces of meat/fish/chicken is about the size of a deck of cards,
10 almonds is 100 calories…
For those who like to prepare every morsel of food they eat, the internet offers lots of cool scales and measuring devices… Or if all that’s too hard, you can now download an app, Mealsnap, that lets you snap a pic of what you’re about to eat (hopefully not after you’ve eaten it) and it will analyze the calorie contents for you. And if even that’s too hard, you can adopt a diet of “healthy” portion-controlled prepared meals and snacks…with the calories listed on the Food Facts labels (remembering of course to note the Servings per Container!). This is what most commercial weight loss programs rely upon, for a hefty fee, of course!
Must you keep food records to lose weight? No one MUST keep food records, but if you don’t want to make yourself aware of what you’re eating by at least recording it, then you MUST find an alternate form of accountability! Not being accountable, aka being in denial (NOT a river in Egypt!) is the biggest reason we fail to meet our weight loss goals and keep the weight off!!! Without some kind of accountability, we’re just flying blind and usually lying to ourselves.
Are there other ways to be accountable besides food records? Of course! You can weigh yourself – daily or weekly, depending on what frequency of feedback you need! Or you can use the way your favorite miniskirt, skinny jeans, or suits fit…But then you don’t try those things on every day! Unless you’re a super eating competitor, no one gains 10 pounds overnight. Weight creeps on slowly, so going for days, weeks, or months without feedback can be dangerous.
So if food records are so indispensable for personal weight loss, why don’t they work for nutrition research? For a combination of reasons: As I alluded to earlier, we tend to forget what we ate, especially things we hoped not to eat. And when we’re being interviewed, we tend to underestimate the foods we think we shouldn’t have eaten and overestimate the foods we think we should be eating…as well as our exercise. Add to that the tendency of research studies to assess our food intake for no more than a day or two at a time, often only once, so at best researchers have a brief snapshot of our eating habits. Or worse, they might ask what we tended to eat 25 or 50 years ago. And researchers must sift through exactly this information from hundreds if not thousands of people, to try to find associations with our health conditions.
For a more entertaining version of this dismal picture, check out 538’s blog! See you next time!!!