Your Food Diary Is Judging You (And That's the Point) - So Frickin' Mini

Megan J. McCrory00:00:24

Megan, Donna, Good morning.

Danna Levy Hoffmann00:00:27

How's it going?

Megan J. McCrory00:00:27

Okay.For this meeting, we wanted to talk about food diaries because we had discussed food diaries when you were coaching Joanna, because that came up a couple times. And also as I was listening to you coaching Joanna, I was like, oh, that's what I. I would do it this way and you're like doing it that way.And I thought, oh, this is going to be a great way to talk about food diaries, because I do food diaries every once in a while. Do you do food diaries at all?

Danna Levy Hoffmann00:00:56

No, I did it when I did elimination diets and kind of had to follow up on what I'm eating. I personally don't, but I use it literally with most of my clients, funny enough.

Megan J. McCrory00:01:09

Okay. For me, I don't do it all the time. I do it like for right now, I'm doing it because I'm wearing the Stello CGM by Dexcom, a non diabetic cgm.And I want to record my food, which is so easy. They just uploaded, updated the app and now they have the AI update.So I just take a picture and it just automatically calculates what's my food, my carbs, my everything. Of course you can adjust it, but who's got time for that?

Danna Levy Hoffmann00:01:40

That's what I loved about actually.Now that you just reminded me that when we did the very cgm, that was when I did the food well, but as you say, it was easy because you could just take a picture of the food and that was it. So that was perfect. Which actually led me to tell my clients to actually just take pictures and send them to me because. Right peasy, right?

Megan J. McCrory00:02:01

I used to do old school. Like, I don't think I ever did like a calorie book maybe way long ago, like early, late, early 2000s maybe. I had a calorie book one point.But I could never be bothered to do this for very long. The pictures are good. And I find that I also use an online diary kind of journal called day one.

Danna Levy Hoffmann00:02:27

It's been around forever.

Megan J. McCrory00:02:28

I pay 30 bucks for it every year, which is the same amount of money as you would buy, like a new nice notebook. So I feel like it's a good thing. And over time they have increased the amount of things that you can add to this online diary.And one of the nice things is that I can take pictures of my food and it timestamps and holds onto it and then I can basically tag it, like what I ate that day or whatever.If I want to do it in a way that I at Some point at the end of two weeks, I can print it all out as a PDF or look at it in, you know, altogether and get the information. And the information is basically what I found with my food diary. Or let's say the aha.Moments I had with keeping a food diary is how frequently I put food in my mouth. That being coffee with cream or food.I wouldn't call myself a snacker, but when I saw how often I'm having coffee with milk or cream, even no sugar, but still, it's like a reaction. You know, the body is identifying it as food. I'm like, that's a lot of times that I'm putting food in my mouth. And I'm still working with that.Like, I'm still working through that of going, okay, can I keep myself to a strict schedule where I have just a breakfast, a lunch, and a dinner with nothing in between? And that's what I struggle with, I think.

Danna Levy Hoffmann00:04:03

Yeah, I mean, I think that Food Diaries really are a great mirror because we are so busy all the time doing stuff, as you say. Like, I didn't notice. That's where the Food Diaries come into play. Because as a health coach, I always get a mirror of the situation for my clients.So I can see, again, frequencies. Like, you know, usually what I ask for is to also add, like, how did you sleep? What are your stress levels? You know, of course, drinking.There's a lot more involved in the app that I'm producing now. There's also, like, of course, physical activity and period and all of the things.But for a. I think for a very basic food diary, we definitely need to know about sleep, we definitely need to know about stress, and we need to know about the symptoms that you're experiencing and when in correlation with the food. So we just literally two seconds ago, we recorded the mini of histamine intolerance.That is really important to know when you're experiencing a certain symptom because it was probably your tipping point with histamine levels as an example. So for me, it is very, very important.And I do remember that, you know, one of the discussions that we had around Food Diaries after we recorded Joanna's session was, I think she mentioned something like, you know, I'll weigh my food. I'll check how much I eat every time. And you kind of took it as like, yeah, that's pretty much, yeah, that's Food Diary.And in my head, it was like, well, what now? Why? Like, why do you need to do that? So to me, that, on its own, would be a second or even third, fourth step into a food diary.I think that that's something that will really get people off of the idea of doing a food diary, because as we just discussed in the first five minutes, who has the fucking time? Who? You know, like, if I can take a picture, I'm done. I'm happier. Right?

Megan J. McCrory00:06:03

Yeah, I agree.But I think that there is, for people who struggle with portion control or understanding how much they're eating, that weighing food for a period of time is beneficial. You train your eye to understand what does 150 grams of nuts actually look like?Because you can sit down and eat nuts and tell the, you know, who tied the pup, but you're going to be eating a lot more calories than you think you're eating, even if they're good fats and whatever. Still, if you're trying to manage your weight and trying to manage your glucose levels and other things, understanding the portion size is a big one.So I 100% agree that I think there's like a. There's definitely a spectrum of food diaries on one end.I think the simplest food diary was one that you also mentioned in one of the episodes with Joanna, which is like, if the concern is how often do you eat, like, processed food or eat out or eat junk food, than actually just sticking a dot in your diary.You know, like if, let's say you have a physical diary, just sticking a red dot somewhere, saying, yep, and then you can go back, how many red dots did I have in the last seven days or one month? That's like, I feel like the least intensive way of tracking some kind of food.And then on the other end of the spectrum is weighing your food, entering that into some kind of digital food diary, which will then output for you your daily macro breakdown and calorie breakdown and weekly look, you know what I mean? And I feel like that end of the spectrum is not for everybody. So you have to figure out, as always.

Danna Levy Hoffmann00:07:59

Right, Right.

Megan J. McCrory00:08:00

Why are you doing this? Why do you feel like you need to monitor your food?And as soon as you understand why, then you can understand what's the best methodology for food diaries.

Danna Levy Hoffmann00:08:12

Right, Exactly. Exactly right.

Megan J. McCrory00:08:15

And that can change.

Danna Levy Hoffmann00:08:16

I totally agree.

Megan J. McCrory00:08:17

You know, like, sometimes I'm like, I just want to know how many times a day I'm eating and go back and go back to our wearables mini. Because with the Oura ring inside the Oura ring, I can also take a picture or pull up a picture.So a lot of times I have, like three different apps that I'm using or testing. So I take one picture of my food and I upload it into the different apps. Right?

Danna Levy Hoffmann00:08:40

Yeah.

Megan J. McCrory00:08:40

And you can do this at the end of the day or whenever.But with the oura ring, I can see, like you said, I can see my sleep, and then I can see if I log my meals consistently, I see the range of times that I'm typically eating, and if my ranges of times are slowly, gradually getting closer to each other, I know I'm eating too frequently. Right. And then it has, like, your bedtime, like, okay, you shouldn't really be eating in this window before sleeping.And that goes back to what you were talking about in, like, looking at the overall picture.So I think leaps and bounds in ahead in terms of getting all this data into one picture where an average user can look at something and go, I understand why I'm not sleeping so well because I'm constantly eating too close to bedtime. And I can see that.

Danna Levy Hoffmann00:09:34

Right, exactly. Exactly. It does give a lot of clarity, I think. And if you're.If you have someone external who can look at it, usually they actually pick up on even more stuff that you just see as normal or fine or whatever.So, yeah, I mean, food Diary, give it a shot and again, just find the way that actually works for you, that you can actually maintain it for a couple of weeks, and that's it. I think that's the easiest way to look at. Look at it. Yeah.

Megan J. McCrory00:10:04

But if you want to know more about Food Diaries, I feel like now I'm revved up. Now I want to have a full episode on Food Diaries.

Danna Levy Hoffmann00:10:12

Let us know in the comments.

Megan J. McCrory00:10:16

Let's leave it here for now. Okay. See you later, Donna.

Danna Levy Hoffmann00:10:19

Bye.