If your focus is more on the reasons
why you eat the way you do, you may want to spend more reflective time on your diary. After you have eaten, write down why you ate (hunger, boredom, etc.) and how you feel afterwards (guilty, deserving, etc.). You may want to create a scale from 1 to 4 showing how bad your craving was. Perhaps you should make note of the time you overeat so you can plan to arrange other activities in the future that will take your mind off of food.
Here are some examples of questions you may want to answer when you eat:
- How were you feeling before you ate?
- Did you feel "gut hunger?"
- Who were you with?
- Did you eat hurriedly or calmly?
- Can you recall everything you ate?
- Did you eat normal portions?
- Were you doing an activity while you were eating?
- How do you feel now (e.g. satisfied, healthy, guilty)?
- Overall was this a positive or negative eating experience?
By looking at your emotions and the reasons why you were eating, who you were with, what you were doing, etc. you will be able to assess whether or not you are giving in to binge eating, emotional eating or if you have a habit of eating among certain people, etc. These points are key if you find you gain or hit plateaus and can't quite figure out where the weight is coming from.
When you see everything you can do with a food diary, there's no reason not to do one! Get started right now! You don't have to wait for a special day or a special meal. Just do it.
