00:00:00

Intro

00:04:15

What I want you to get out of this episode

00:07:10

Why I don't like MyFitnessPal

00:10:00

How often to keep a food log

00:11:20

What to include in the log

00:17:55

How my thoughts on temperature + pulse have changed

00:19:50

The new metrics I'm including on food logs

00:22:10

Why it’s important to analyse the food logs

00:24:10

What to pay attention to when reviewing the log

00:32:00

If symptoms don't match up with what you expect

00:36:10

How my strategy with calories + macros has changed

00:43:35

When food logs aren't helpful

00:45:30

What benefits you can get from a food log

00:00:00

Intro

Chris Sandel: Welcome to episode 166 of Real Health Radio. You can find the links talked about as part of this episode at the show notes, which is www.seven-health.com/166.

Welcome to Real Health Radio. Health advice that’s more than just about how you look. And here’s your host, Chris Sandel.

Chris Sandel: Hey everybody, and welcome back to another installment of Real Health Radio. So this week it is another solo episode, and I’m doing another second edition. So this podcast is all about keeping a food log. The first edition of this was an episode, episode 11 of the podcast, and that came out back in October 2015, so just shy of four years ago.

Interestingly, when I look back on that episode, the basic gist of it and the backbone of the content, I’m still on board with. Four years is a long time, and what has changed fairly significantly in that time is the clients I’m seeing now. They’re much more heavily skewed towards disordered eating and the eating disorder end of the spectrum, but there’s still a lot of similarities with how I was doing work back then, and how I’m doing things now when it pertains to the food log.

So just like with the other second edition episodes, when I’ve changed my mind on something, I’ll explain why and what I do now. If there’s new information coming in, I’ll let you know that it’s new information. And then when there are minor changes, that’ll just simply happen without me feeling the need to tell you about them. As an overview, let me just explain what I want you to get out of this podcast episode, because I think seeing the title of Keeping a Food Log probably leads to certain expectations, or comes with a certain level of baggage because of how food logs are often used, and I’d say the majority of people who’ve kept a food log in the past or are currently doing so, are doing it from a place of control.

So if they keep a log, it helps to make sure that they keep below some calorie amounts, or maybe it’s less about calories and more about macros. So if they do the log, it means that they keep their carbs below a certain amount, or it means they keep their fat below a certain amount, or maybe it’s to do with specific foods, so that by keeping a log they’re trying to prevent themselves from eating sugar or cake or ice cream. Basically, a food log is about restriction and helping them in their attempt to restrict, whether that be for weight loss or for health or for whatever reasons the person believes that they’re doing it.

While this is typically why food logs are kept, this is not why I get clients to keep food logs, and this is not what this podcast episode is about. I suggest that people do them because it’s a useful tool to better understand what you are doing and to notice patterns. So the bigger picture or goal of this is then being able to use it as a way to learn to listen to and to trust your body, and to eat and live in a way that supports your health. This is what the food log is helping with. If people are able to do this without a log, then great. But from experience, I find that most people just can’t get to this place nearly as quickly or with the same level of understanding, in comparison to when they do keep a log.

I will address later on, when I feel that it is better for people to skip over this, because it’s a tool that isn’t helpful for everyone or isn’t helpful in every situation, so I want to just explain when it’s not helpful, so you can figure out if that is the case for you. But I will say that is in the minority of cases.

00:04:15

What I want you to get out of this episode

Coming back to the overview and what I want you to get out of this episode, it’s understanding why a food log could be so helpful, and to get to this place, like what are some of the things you should be recording or paying attention to give you the information. Then also, how to analyze this and what to be looking out for. Because I imagine there’s going to be some things that I’ll mention, that will be rather obvious and straightforward, but there’s others that won’t be. So if you do have any preconceived ideas about food logs, please put them to the side and simply listen to what I have to say on the topic.

When I get clients to keep a food log, I’m very explicit about what it’s about. Because as I’ve said, I know many of them have kept food logs in the past, and they have these perceptions or maybe even worries about doing it. Something I will always say to clients is that I genuinely don’t care what they eat. What I mean by this statement is that I attach no moral values to food. I’m not going to think a client is bad because they had cake, or they’re good because they ate some kale. I know for many clients there can be embarrassment or shame about their eating, and this can come from many different reasons, but from my perspective, there is no judgment. I simply want to know what they are doing and how it’s working for them. If it’s working well, then keep doing it, and if it’s not, let’s figure out what we can change to improve the situation.

In the original episode I did on this, I made reference to and linked to a food log template that I use with clients. Since that episode, I’ve stopped using that sheet. I then started using an app called Tummy, so this was an app that I created with a past client who was an app developer. We spent a couple of years on it with the hope of making it a business, and it included the ability to enter or record all the different things I’m going to go through as part of this episode. Tummy is now defunct. So after a number of years, we just couldn’t make it work as a business, and it just wasn’t worth the server costs of keeping it going simply for me to use.

Since then, I’ve just gone back to basics. I suggest that clients write the information down in a journal and then send it over, or they keep a Word document and import it there, or they add it to notes in their phone. So it doesn’t need to be technical at all. I do miss some of the reports that I used to be able to pull using Tummy, like especially as I was able to go back over months and months and how easy it was to do this, but in terms of the results I get with clients, it doesn’t make a difference, and this stripped back version is definitely easier for people to fill out.

00:07:10

Why I don't like MyFitnessPal

I know there are also many online options, but I simply haven’t found any that I like, hence why we started Tummy in the first place. The online option that clients are most likely to have used or are currently using at the point of us commencing work together, is MyFitnessPal. I don’t want this episode to turn into a tirade of why I don’t like MyFitnessPal, but I’ll keep this short and I’ll give my big reasons for why I think it’s problematic. When you sign up to MyFitnessPal, it asks you how much you weigh, how much you want to weigh, and typically, how much you want to lose, and how quickly you want to do it. It takes this information, and then it tells you how many calories to eat. The whole point of the app, really, is geared towards weight loss, which I have a problem with.

But the recommendations that it spits out based on the information that someone puts in, is very questionable. So I played around with the app in the past, and I put in my correct weight and correct activity levels, and that I wanted to lose weight. I didn’t, but I just wanted to see what it would say. And it told me that I should be eating 1,200 calories a day. This is an insanely low amount of food. So to put things in perspective, the recommended calorie intake for a three-year-old is between 1,000 and 1,400 calories a day. Even in the famous Minnesota Starvation Experiment, which if you’ve never heard of before, you can check out. I’ve done two episodes on that. I’ll put links to them in the show notes. One is episode 42, and one is episode 147.

As part of the experiment, and this was actually called a semi-starvation experiment, they were feeding the men 1,600 calories a day. So for me to be told to eat 1,200 calories a day, is worrying. I’ve had clients in the past who’ve come to see me who were trying to follow an 800 calorie a day diet because this is what MyFitnessPal told them to eat. When you actually fill it in, if you keep your intake below this suggested amount, it comes up in green. So green equals good. So you’re eating a total of 700 calories in a day, and it’s telling you you’re doing great. Then if you go over this allotted amount, it comes up in red, so red equals bad. So you shouldn’t have eaten so much food. Between the incredibly questionable calorie intake suggestions and the color-coding helping someone feel good or bad about the eating, I’m not a fan of MyFitnessPal. Apart from rare exceptions, if a client is using it when we start together, I’ll suggest that they stop using it.

00:10:00

How often to keep a food log

The final thing I’ll say before jumping into the actual food logging side of things is how often to do one. When I start with a client, I will ask them to do five days, so I have a decent-ish baseline to start with. Then while we’re working together, I’ll get them to do it three or four days a week. This is typically plenty of time for me to pick up and for them to pick up information about what’s working for them and what they’re doing, without becoming burnt out on doing it and not wanting to do it at all. But it can also be a good challenge for clients who are depending on doing it every day, to help them break this and to learn to be able to eat without keeping a log.

This is not a forever thing. I haven’t kept a food log in years. I’m in tune with what I’m doing, and so I don’t need one. If I wanted to start to pay more attention, and I did start using one, it would be for a limited time. So for me to get out what I need from doing the log, and then stopping it again. While I do think it is a fantastic tool, it’s not something that you should start and then just continue on indefinitely. It’s helping you to learn certain skills, which I’ll talk about, and then you don’t need it anymore.

00:11:20

What to include in the log

So let’s get started with what to include and record as part of the log. The first thing is to include what you actually eat. Include everything you eat, so main meals and snacks and even if you have, I don’t know, just a cracker, or you have half an orange or something small, I would still include it in the log. This would also be the case for fluids. So if you have a coffee or a tea, or a glass of wine, or a coke, include this in the log. The logs should be a reflection of what is really occurring in your life. I know I suggested doing it three or four days week, but this shouldn’t somehow become biased. Don’t just log your “good days” and not your “bad days.” I don’t think in good and bad terms, but meaning don’t feel like, “I’m doing really well today, I should record” and “I’m not doing so well today, so I’m not going to record it.”

Have the logs be a reflection of what is actually going on. This is something I’ll always ask with clients. Does it feel like their logs reflect reality? And if not, which does happen, why? What’s missing? What should be there? What’s different? If you are doing different things, say during the week versus the weekend, or on exercise versus non-exercise days, do logs that cover these different days so that you have that information.

Alongside logging your meals and your snacks, you want to include the time of these things occurring. So meal timings are really important. Like two people can eat the exact same foods in a day, but at different intervals. These gaps and how they’re structured can lead to very different results.

You want to include the time that you go to bed and the time that you wake up, and this way you can see how much sleep you’re getting. If you’re consistent with your bed and wake time, you can also include different information about your sleep. So, give your sleep a score out of 10, for quality of sleep, or how refreshed you’re feeling on waking. If you need to urinate in the night, you can mark that down. If you’re awakened in the night for any length of time, mark that down. Yeah, putting down other qualitative information around your sleep. You can also use the timings as well. So looking at your bedtime and your wake time, with your mealtimes. So what is the gap between waking and when you have your first meal? What is the gap between your last meal at nighttime and you going to bed? What’s the gap between your last meal, the day before, and then your first meal the next day? All of these factors can impact on energy levels and digestion, and sleep quality, and so they’re useful to pay attention to.

The next thing you want to be including are symptoms and how you’re feeling, and how often certain things are occurring. This can be physical symptoms, it can be mental symptoms, it can be emotional symptoms. Physical symptoms would be things like bloating and constipation, heartburn, back pain, that kind of thing. Mental symptoms could be things like difficulty concentrating, anxiety, irritability, brain flow. Emotional symptoms could be feeling angry or feeling teary. There’s obviously an overlap between mental and emotional, and so it kind of matters less which category this goes into, and more just that you mark it down. I should also say that I’ve just mentioned negative symptoms, but you can be also including positive symptoms as well. It doesn’t have to be just negative symptoms. As time progresses, including those positive symptoms can be really useful as well.

I would say just the more notes you can make about their staff, the better. Because the notes aren’t just useful for you today, but it’s so when you look back in a month time or in two months time, there is a reflection of what’s going on and you aren’t simply relying on memory, which is highly fallible and most likely you won’t remember everything. If you are getting certain ongoing issues, you can mark down so you have quantitative information on this, so you can look back and say, “Okay, last week this thing happened six times. This week it’s happened three times.” You want to also include extra information about things that have happened during that day. So things like if you’ve exercised, as I said before, so what did you do? When did you do it? Maybe if you worked extra hours at work, or it was a particularly stressful day at work and you got home later, or if you had an emotional call with a sibling or a parent.

These components of the day can impact on your hunger levels. They can impact on the timing of meals. They can impact on your mood and emotions, and many other aspects. This extra information can then be key to understanding how other components outside of eating can impact on your symptoms. And so it’s important for me when working with clients to see this, but I also think it’s important for yourself, so that again, when you’re coming back and reviewing this, you can remember what actually occurred.

You can mark down stool. So, when are you passing a stool? What time did this occur? You can use the Bristol Stool Chart to describe them. I will link to the Bristol Stool Chart in the show notes if you’ve never heard of it before. I’ve also done a whole podcast on stools, which I’ll also link to in the show notes.

For women, I have them marked down on the log where they are in their cycle. So if I’m working with a client who is getting their cycle, I’ll get them to mark it down. Day one is the first day bleeding, and different changes and symptoms can occur at different times in the menstrual cycle. So having these clearly marked on the page, can help someone to learn, A) about their cycle, but B) just understand about how that interacts with various symptoms.

00:17:55

How my thoughts on temperature + pulse have changed

The next part that I mentioned in the original episode was temperature and pulse. I used to suggest that clients take readings for these first thing on waking, and then to do it 20 minutes after each meal and snack. I actually just don’t do this anymore. So I will often get clients to do temperature first thing in the morning.

This is to see what is happening with temperature in the first half of the cycle versus second half of the cycle, because temperature will typically increase after ovulation, due to increased progesterone levels in the second half of the cycle. So this can be helpful from a cycle perspective. But in terms of doing temperature and pulse multiple times a day, it’s just not a focus anymore. There’s a couple of reasons for this. One is that there is only so many things that people can do, and this was always just feeling like a challenge for someone to consistently do it, and just felt like more trouble than it was worth.

Secondly, my client population has shifted, so I’m seeing people who have much more extreme symptoms, and I don’t need to see that someone’s pulse is low or their temperature is low to know that their body is in a hypermetabolic state. All their symptoms are telling me that.

Yes, it could help to see numbers improving as their health improves, but there’s also other symptoms that are also improving that can let us know this. They can see this by simply checking temperature and pulse, I don’t know, once or twice a month. As things improve, they’ll be able to see those numbers changing. It’s not that they have to do it every day and multiple times a day. It’s not that I disagree with what temperature and pulse can show, it’s more that it just feels redundant and that I can get this information in other ways and it’s just I don’t want to overwhelm people.

00:19:50

The new metrics I'm including on food logs

While I’ve removed temperature and pulse, there are things that I’ve now started to include, that I didn’t include in the first episode. So hunger and fullness is one of them or two of them.

I will often get clients to mark down their hunger before a meal, and then their fullness after a meal. There is a scale that I’ll use that I’ll give to clients, so we’re both using the same metrics. And then for each meal or each snack, they then marked down to numbers. So they’ll be a three before the meal and then a seven afterwards, or two before and then an eight afterwards or whatever it is.

I do stress that hunger and fullness isn’t everything. I don’t want it to become the only metric where someone’s only allowed to eat when they’re hungry, and they have to stop when they’re full, and if they go outside of these parameters, that they’re doing something wrong. But rather, it’s just a way of starting to see what is someone’s hunger and fullness signals like, and what are we starting to notice in terms of patterns with that stuff.

Another helpful thing to mark down alongside this is satisfaction. So how satisfied does someone feel eating that particular meal or snack, and they can give their satisfaction a score out of 10. The reason for asking for this is to differentiate between fullness and satisfaction. So I could eat a whole plate of steamed broccoli and be an eight on the fullness scale, but it’ll probably lead me to being a one or a two on the satisfaction scale.

I think it’s useful to differentiate between the two of them and get people to start to pay attention to this. I should add as well that not every meal and snack is going to be or is meant to be a 10 out of 10 for satisfaction. But it’s just starting to notice, what are the trends? And so those are probably the main ideas of the things to be including on the log.

You don’t have to do all of these all at once. It could be overwhelming to do all of these at once, and it may just feel like there’s now so many variables that you’re trying to pay attention to, but it just becomes confusing. Start with some of them, pay attention and see what you notice and then move on to the next things.

00:22:10

Why it’s important to analyse the food logs

Let me talk about the analyzing side of things. Simply filling out the log isn’t going to lead to an increased understanding of your body, and what works best for you, and what areas need to change. To do this you have to do a bit of detective work and see what you can notice. So let me give some examples of things to look out for.

Just as a side note, like during the first consult when I’m having a conversation around the food log with clients, before I ever give my opinion to a client, I will always ask for their thoughts first. So I want to see what they’ve noticed or how they feel about their eating.

As humans, we have a tendency to be much better at solving problems for other people, than our own. So it’s easier to hear a friend talking about something, and you feel like you know what they should do or what they should say, or what would be best for them. But when it’s our own thing, it becomes quite difficult and becomes quite blinkered. So as a way of trying to bypass this, I’ll typically get clients to imagine that a friend of theirs has come to them and asked them for advice. So they’re suffering with this list of symptoms, and I’ll go through the symptoms that the client is dealing with, and this friend has then given them the food logs that are the same as the ones that they’ve just shared with me, and I ask them like, “What advice would you give to your friend?” Typically, they’re able to mention many areas, and areas that if I’d simply asked them what they should be changing, they may have missed out on.

I wanted to mention this because my job is less about being an expert and demonstrating to clients all the stuff that I know, and more about helping them improve and make changes. The more that ideas for change are coming from the client, the less resistance there is to change, and the more likely they’re going to be able to get on them and make those changes.

00:24:10

What to pay attention to when reviewing the log

So with that explanation out of the way, here are some of the ideas of things to notice or pay attention to. So what foods do you eat lots of? What foods do you not eat very much of? What are the reasons for this? Like, is it because of habit? Is it because you’re in a rut? Is it because you fear certain foods? What supposedly healthy foods don’t actually work very well for you? What’s supposedly bad or unhealthy foods are actually supportive for you?

The reason I ask this is to start to bypass beliefs based on what someone has heard or read, and instead focus on someone’s lived experience and what their body is telling them, based on certain foods. What foods do they feel like they do best on, or they do worse on? Are they able to notice, for example, certain forms of carbohydrates that will work really well, in terms of stable energy, keeping them warm, allowing them to go a longer time before hunger symptoms arise again? Or are there others that they know that they don’t do so well on? Same with proteins, same with fats. In the beginning, someone might not be able to answer this question or answer it confidently. But it is something for them to keep in mind.

How does the level of cooked food versus raw food affect things? So what happens if they have lots of salads versus not at all? What happens if they’re having lightly steamed vegetables versus well cooked? What if they have like brown rice versus white rice? With all the various reactions to foods that they may be getting, how much of this is about genuine physiology, versus the state that their body is in? How much is stress impacting on it? How much is the nocebo effect and their fears around food impacting on this? I know with these kinds of questions we’re entering into the territory of speculation, but it can be a question that can help clients to start to see different reactions in different situations.

What symptoms are coming up regularly? And with these symptoms, is there any patterns like time of day, connection to particular foods or particular meals, connection to certain preceding events, so feeling stressed or the amount of sleep they’ve had? Could it be connected to where they are in their cycle? Looking at timing, so how often is someone eating? What happens when they eat more frequently? What happens when they eat less frequently? Are they someone who does well on three meals, no snacks and that’s it? Are they someone who does well eating three meals and three snacks? You’ve got one scenario when someone’s probably eating every six hours. You’ve got another scenario where someone’s eating every two and a half to three hours. So which one’s better or some other option?

What time of the day are they doing the majority of their eating? Are they skewed more towards the morning or more towards the evening, or is it evenly spread out throughout the day? With this, what is the reason that this is occurring? Do they do this because they genuinely know it works for them? Is it because of something they’ve read? Is it simply because that’s the habit that they’re in?

Does what they eat match up with the time of year for where they’re living? So I’ll often look at someone’s logs, and try to imagine if I had no idea where they were in the world, and what the temperature was outside, would I be able to guess purely based on their food? Because if it is the middle of winter time, they are living in New York city and I’m seeing lots of greens and green smoothies, and salads and tropical fruits, this is kind of a bit of a mismatch between the kinds of foods and the weather.

This isn’t to say that you can only eat certain foods at certain times of the year. You can eat whatever you want whenever you want it, but it’s more about whether this style of eating feels appropriate for the conditions in which the body is in. Does the eating match up with the intensity of someone’s day? So are you eating more on days where you are exercising? Are you eating more on days you are doing lots of thinking and strategizing, and have a full-on day at work? Are you eating more on a day that you’re looking after a small child for the whole day? I’m not saying on these days you have to be eating more, but it’s a consideration and often it can be needed.

What is someone noticing or what are you noticing with hunger and fullness? So what happens when you start eating at different levels of hunger? What happens when you finish eating at different levels of fullness? What foods or meals lead to more fullness, more easily? What foods or meals take more of it, to get you there? Something I’ll often notice is that if someone gets hungrier before meal, and this goes over some threshold, then they’re likely to crave a more highly palatable food, and they often end up feeling more overly full at the end of the meal. Or for other clients, they just say they don’t feel hungry at all. But when they then start eating, this is when they notice that they’re hungry. Using hunger and fullness and seeing what are the patterns for satisfaction, where is the score regularly coming out?

Are there meals that surprise them or surprise you, and lead to more satisfaction than you thought? Or are there meals that you thought would be more satisfying, but really aren’t?

What’s happening with sleep? Are you getting enough total sleep? Are your bed and wake times consistent, whether it’s the week or the weekend? What’s the quality like, so what score out of 10 are you constantly giving, or regularly giving your sleep? What are the most productive times of the day? So from a work sense, when are you best at certain tasks over others? Are there aspects of the log and what you’re learning from that, that then could assist this? This is obviously getting further away from the food log side of things, but it is a useful consideration if you’re using the logs, as a means to better understand yourself.

For example, I’m much better at writing tasks if I start earlier in the day. So I’ll set up certain days of the week so that this can happen. It might mean that I’d have to do other tasks at different points in the day or do things differently, and just using the log to assist as part of this.

That’s just some of the ideas, and it’s definitely a non-exhaustive list. When analyzing or thinking about those things, it’s important to remember that it’s not just about today. If there is some symptom, it’s not simply about looking at what happened in the meal before that symptom. It could be about that meal. It could be about something that happened earlier in the day, but it could also be about something that happened yesterday, or it could be about what’s been happening this week or this month.

00:32:00

If symptoms don't match up with what you expect

While it can be useful to look at the details and really get into the specifics, you also need to keep the bigger picture in mind, and it’s not just what immediately proceeded whatever the symptom, or whatever day is going on. There’s also a couple of other things that I want to mention with this. The first is that what you notice on the food logs in terms of symptoms might not be what you expect to happen. So if someone has a longstanding eating disorder or more the extreme end of disordered eating, symptoms can often get worse before they get better. You may start eating more and your digestion gets worse, or you’re eating more but you now feel more lethargic, or your skin is now worse and it used to be better.

In scenarios like this, I can recommend books and resources for clients to read, so they understand why this is happening, that it isn’t proof that they’re intolerant to some certain food, or that what they were doing before is right, but rather that this is what recovery looks like, and these are symptoms that occur as part of recovery. Because realistically, in the early stages of recovery, a lot of what I’m going through in this episode isn’t so relevant. The two things that then matter the most, is that someone is taking in higher amounts of calories and that they’re eating regularly, and outside of this, not much else matters. So getting into the details and the weeds about trying to figure out what forms of carbohydrates you do better on, or why this symptom is happening a little more, or a little less, it’s just noise and distraction.

Those things with time can become important and a part of getting to know your body and to reconnect with your body, and hear what it’s saying. But to start with, really all it’s saying is, “I’m hungry,” and the symptoms that are occurring are connected to this. This is why it can be helpful for me to be working with a client, so we can go through this. Because I have an understanding when something is simply part of recovery, or even if someone’s not in recovery, what I would expect during that transition stage or what I would expect in the early stages, versus a symptom that indicates, “Okay, maybe we need to try something different, or do something different.”

The other thing I want to mention as well, and I’ve kind of alluded to it, is that things change with time. What works for you now might not work for you in six months time. This is particularly true as you go through major changes and transitions in your life, and whether that be as you get a little older, like demands at work become more strenuous or you become pregnant, or you become a parent, or there’s major life stresses or hurdles, the demands on the body in these situations are changeable, and this will impact on what you need and what you thrive on. For me, this is really the meta-skill that the food log is meant to be teaching. It’s not meant to be about figuring out what works for you once and for all, and then this is done, now you just follow the same template until you die.

Instead, what you’re meant to be getting out of this is that it teaches you how to listen and to pay attention to your body. Like how do you figure out what you need? How do you figure out what works best for you? How do you know what you’re feeling? This is known as interoceptive awareness, which is the sense of the internal state of the body. When you know how to do this, when things change, it’s not a problem because you can change with it. Like you notice you’re hungrier, so you eat more. You notice you need more sleep, so you get more sleep. This is very different to ignoring these sensations, and simply following what worked in the past. There’s nothing wrong with asking why things have changed, to figure out if there’s something bigger that needs to be looked at or investigated. This should definitely happen.

But having the ability to notice these changes and respond accordingly is the whole point of keeping the log. It’s to learn this meta-skill.

00:36:10

How my strategy with calories + macros has changed

In the original podcasts, it was at this point that I spoke about calories and macros. My thoughts on this stuff have changed, so let me explain what I used to do, what I do now and why this has changed. Previously with basically every client, we would look at calories.

It’s not where I would immediately start, but maybe after like three or four or five consults, we’d normally look into it. The way I used to do this was have clients measure out what they’re eating, and then use an online calorie tool to figure out the calories in each of their snacks and meals. We would then see where they’re coming out each day, and we would then use an online calculator to see what they actually need.

I will put a link in the show notes to the calculator as I still use it with clients if they want to work out their daily calorie needs. I’ve also done a video on using this, so I’ll put that in the show notes too. Basically, we’d see what they are eating and compare this to the calorie calculator, to see how things matched up. There are some caveats to this, and I go into those in a lot of detail in the video, that I’ll put in the show notes to using the calculator. But the biggest one that I want to mention here is that the calculator is only looking at today. So it’s based on what you did today and what you need. So if someone’s been overtraining and under-eating for years or decades, which is often the case for the vast majority of the clients I have, then it isn’t taking this deficit into account.

But despite this, it can still be a useful tool, because it typically shows clients that they’re drastically under-eating, even if we forget about this debt. So they aren’t even taking in enough to cover today’s needs, let alone all the staff that is a backlog. And so how this has changed today versus when I did the first episode podcast is that most of the time we don’t need to look at calories. I can simply look at someone’s log and know where they’re roughly coming out. I can then see their symptoms and see that they, say, need more food. I’ve probably looked at 25,000, 30,000 days of food logs, so I have a pretty good feel for this stuff now.

Clients without this experience can do this too. And so if they can get on board with increasing their eating, then getting them to track and do everything around calories is a huge amount of work that’s just really not needed. Really, I tend to just use calories now in terms of really formal logging and working things out, where there seems to be a mismatch between what a client is eating, and what they think that they’re eating. So where they think they’re eating a really high amount, and actually when I look at it and I’m like, “No, I don’t think you’re getting close to that.” Or where there’s a mismatch between what they think they need and what they actually need. So where they think that they only need 1,700 calories a day and then we’re able to use the calculator, and show that they need significantly more than this.

But if these two scenarios aren’t happening, and clients are able to just get on board with eating more and listening to hunger, and all of these other components, then I don’t think it’s needed. The one exception I have to this, and it’s when I have a client who’s been using an app like MyFitnessPal for a long time, and their calorie intakes have been very low. While they want to be increasing their eating, they just can’t go all in and they struggle to do this. In this case, in the beginning, we will start with setting calorie minimums that they have to exceed each day. So we set the goal for two weeks, and then we would review it during the next consult. And so they use the calories as a baseline of where they need to be getting their eating to.

For these clients at this early stage, I try to move away from this kind of tracking. It’s just too much. If they do, it actually leads to them eating less so I find it the best option given the situation. The thing I always say, and I’m always very clear about is, the target that we set is a minimum. There is no maximum amount of calories. They are allowed and they’re encouraged to eat as much food as possible. So the goal is simply to prevent calories dropping below a certain threshold, and then for each two weeks for us to be building up their daily intake.

And so the next idea is around macros or macronutrients. What this means is looking at the percentage of carbs and proteins and fats that are coming in each day. And so what I covered in the original podcast and what I used to do, was to get clients to try out different macro ranges. For example, trying out a range of 50-25-25, so meaning 50% of their food is carbohydrates, 25% of their food is protein, and 25% is fat. And then trying 40-30-30, so 40% is carbohydrates, 30% is protein and 30% is fat. And then finally a trying out 30-30-40, which is 30% carbohydrates, 30% protein, and 40% fat. Now, the idea for doing this was to see if a person felt better at one of these ratios or another. So did they feel better having more carbs or more fat, for example?

The problem with this is it was a ton of work. To accurately track this meant weighing and measuring what a client was eating at each snack and each meal. But not just doing this, but doing it in advance so they would then be able to match up with the certain percentages, that they’re aiming for. So if they put together a snack, and then they needed to have a bit more carbohydrate, being able to add that in. I guess if it had led to some kind of profound realization, this extra work in the short term may have been worth it. But typically, what I found was that people didn’t really notice much of a difference. Or if they did, we could have figured it out in a much simpler way.

For example, if I want to see if someone did better having higher fats and lower carbohydrates, then they could simply have some more cheese, some more avocados, some more nuts, some more fatty cuts of meats, use some extra butter or some extra olive oil as part of their cooking. And then at the same time, have them pull down the amount of rice, or the amount of bread, or the amount of fruit, or the amount of potatoes or whatever that they’re eating. This wouldn’t lead to an exact macro figure, but it would give them a sense of what it felt like eating in this manner. And so, a couple of years ago, I just abandoned doing macros with clients. I didn’t think it was worth the effort, and as I was starting to use things like hunger and fullness and food satisfaction more, it just felt completely counterproductive.

00:43:35

When food logs aren't helpful

As I said at the top, there are times when keeping a log isn’t advised. For this, it’s really about a person’s mindset and their relationship with keeping a log, more than anything else. So keeping a log isn’t always fun. It isn’t always easy. There will be certain aspects that clients may find difficult or triggering. But often despite these negatives, clients can see the benefits of doing it. So they’re starting to notice things that they wouldn’t have noticed without doing the log, or the log helps them to keep up behaviors that they want to be doing and turning into habits. So whether that be getting to bed at a certain time, or eating more food, or being more consistent at eating at regular intervals. Even if there are some negatives with during the log, it’s a net positive for that person.

The times when I find that it is not helpful is when the negatives outweigh the positives. So when a client feels that they aren’t learning much from it and that it is, in fact, the log that is getting in the way of them being able to make the changes they want. For example, they’re trying to recover from restriction, but on the days they keep a log it leads to them eating less. That this keeps the food front of mind and it leads to more anxiety, and it just becomes more or consuming when someone’s trying to get the opposite. This is always a discussion I have with clients, and continue to check in with them as we work together. It means there are certain clients for which we just don’t keep logs, as we discover it isn’t helpful. I’m just not dogmatic about this stuff. There is no right way. And so if clients aren’t finding or a client isn’t finding it helpful, and it’s leading to negative outcomes, then we’ll just stop doing it.

00:45:30

What benefits you can get from a food log

So to finish up this episode, I want to give some final ideas about why I think a food log can be helpful. I’ve covered the many things you can pay attention to, but I want this to be more sort of bigger picture ideas, in terms of where it can help you get to, what you can get out of it. Some of these I’ve touched on throughout this episode, but I just wanted to sort of summarize it all here.

Firstly, it can help you to notice patterns, and to change relationship with food. Food for so long, for a lot of people and especially the people I work with, has been this thing that they think about or battle with, because they want to stay “thin” or they want to “stay healthy.” Or it’s about managing their emotions or about, as I said, creating health but actually it’s really destroying their health.

And so we can use the log and get them to see food as fuel, food as enjoyment, what things are actually working for them. It can just help to shift their beliefs and their attitudes around food. It helps clients or it can help clients to eat more. Regularly clients will say that if they don’t log, they end up eating less and they find it easier to eat more when they’re logging than without it. This isn’t always the case as I’ve just talked about, but it happens enough to make me think that it is a useful tool, pretty generally or on the whole, for helping food intake to increase. It helps clients to avoid burying their head in the sand. Food logs show them things in black and white. Too often people will say like, “Yeah, I’m definitely eating more,” when in reality we have a look and it’s actually not happening.

Or that they’ll say like, “My eating isn’t really a problem,” and then we look and we discover that from the point at which they wake in the morning till say 7:00 PM at night, despite a pretty intense day, there’s barely 500 calories that have come in. It just helps to give a really good black and white picture of what’s going on. Sometimes clients will stop doing the log when they’re starting to slip back into old habits, as they don’t want to face up to things. And so this can be a flag for me, but it can also be a flag for them. They can notice this pattern, that when there’s a desire to stop doing the logs, that this might not be coming from the best place. As I said at the start, you don’t need to keep doing a log forever. So it’s about working out why there is that feeling or that sensation. But yeah, if it’s coming from a place of old habits are starting to rise up, then this can be a way of starting to detect that, and possibly detect it earlier.

It can also encourage variety with eating. So as we get to see things in black and white, it can be very obvious when someone’s having the same meal and snack, again and again, and again. And so this can then help to encourage variety and for them to try new things. It helps clients to remember the improvements. When things change, we can forget what it used to be like. So you have a bad day, and you start feeling like there’s been no progress whatsoever. So to see that this isn’t accurate, the clients can then just go back over the logs and look, “Okay, what was happening six weeks ago? What was happening two months ago?” And compare it to now, and we can then see how much things have changed.

Having a log allows me to make some sort of nutritional or health advice. I can obviously do this without the log by asking questions, but with the log it’s just much more obvious. For example, if someone’s getting lots of bloating, I can then look in the log and suggest that it could be because they’re eating lots of salad, or it looks like it’s happening every time they’re having nuts. They can then test this out and see how these various changes help.

I’ve been using a food log with clients now for over a decade, and honestly find it to be an invaluable tool. This is probably because I use it differently to how it’s often prescribed, but I honestly don’t think I’d get the results I get with many of my clients without the log.

And so hopefully, this episode has explained a little about why that is the case, and how you can do it on your own if you’re interested. That is it for this week’s show. Again, I’ll be back with another episode next week, until then, take care of yourself.