Why do we initially resist logging our eating?

[Daves_Not_Here]

I'm curious what others think about this:  I notice that a lot of people who express frustration at not being able to lose weight seem weirdly reluctant to log their food intake.  Speaking for myself, 6 months ago, I tried to increase my activity level and tweak my eating without logging my food but got nowhere and had to "throw in the towel".  Once I started logging, the weight started coming off.

And my excuses were pretty silly:  TIME - I'm willing to spend hours working out and not losing weight but I can't take the few minutes to log my food which I know will result in weight loss.  PERFECTION - there are errors involved in measuring calories eaten so I won't do it at all.  HELPLESSNESS - The process of logging food is too difficult for me even though I am a semi-literate adult who functions in the world.  KNOW IT ALL - I just know I have a calorie deficit even though I haven't lost weight for months.

Why the weird resistance?  My hypothesis is that we subconsciously know that logging our food will reveal that we eat more calories than we think, and just don't want to face it -- same as how we don't want to step on the scales after a day of binge-eating.   What do you guys think?

[Kevinjb78]

Measuring by eye is not that hard. I just convert everything in my head to cups and tablespoons. Cups are 8oz. 1 tablespoon is 1/16 of a cup or 1/2 oz. If you can estimate the volume of a cup and a tablespoon, you are set. It's not exact but over time, I feel like I've developed a skill. Weight on the other hand is not so simple. When I worked as a butcher, I got super good at it but that's a skill that comes and goes. I feel like the key in the beginning is that you have to make it as simple as possible. Crawl before you walk. I wouldn't log meals when I started because they were too complicated but I still logged the easy ones. Over time, especially if I had a bad couple of days in a row, I would get motivated to try harder. But it starts with just doing the easy ones first and then adding in more complex ones once it starts to become a habit.

[rachiti]

I'm glad you found something which works for you.  I much prefer using the Fitbit app so that everything is in one place.  I also do NOT allow my phone in the kitchen for many reasons.  What you suggest sounds incredibly tedious & difficult to calculate in my mind while I'm cooking - but that's me.  I prefer to work in ounces as that's how I bake.  After doing this for nearly two years, I know the approx. calories of something before it even makes it to my fitbit - so I don't bother tracking until the end of the day these days.  It's still tedious...the mere entry of items alone no matter how simplistic...will always be tedious.  I admit my method might not be as precise, but it's reasonably close & keeps cooking fun for me.  I buy from the farmer's market, can, freeze, store in mason jars etc. so very few things in my kitchen/pantry have labels on them.  If I ate more processed foods I would probably use the app more often, but even my dried fruits oftentimes come from the natural foods bins at my grocery store or are ones I've dried myself ie. no labels so just grabbing the item from the Fitbit app for 3 ounces raisins is the same as what you're suggesting for your tracking.  I'm also not sure how cooking is mostly about waiting for food to be done.  Even when I'm making soup I prep as I go so by the time step 1 has finished cooking, I have the ingredients ready for step two.  I also cook Indian food a lot, three hours of constant hands-on time is oftentimes the case.  I just guess it's the difference between how we cook that makes what you do work for you and what I do work for me.

[SunsetRunner]

@rachiti it is difficult to calculate, that's why I don't calculate anything 🙂 The app does it for me. I just enter raw data. Using a kitchen scale ( grams or ounces - it doesn't really matter with which one you stick ) is as simple as putting an ingredient anywhere. I don't use processed food ( with very rare exceptions ). I don't like to buy food from street markets either. After seeing few times various owners of stalls who smoke next to the products they sell I decided to go with supermarkets. I just found it disgusting. Fruits, vegetables etc. - labelled doesn't mean processed. I do freeze food but as I mentioned I label frozen food myself. And still, I enjoy cooking. 95% of the time I spend on actual cooking, 5% ( or even less ) on logging. I probably bit overexaggerated that "waiting" thing 🙂 Depends really on the meal and I should be more precise if I say such statements. In my case ingredients are logged into the recipe on the way from fridge to scale. Later if I need to add more of anything I just adjust number by extra weight. It might be that I got to some level of proficiency that it simply doesn't block my cooking and only in my eyes it's simple. I was thinking about it and I guess it's a bit like with driving a car. In the beginning, you need to think about every step but the more proficient you get you automate things like for example clutch control and you can focus on actual driving. My method may seem to be complex and I admit that I may be the only person for who it could be actually working 😄 The more ways the better. Lots of people look for the way to control their food intake and I believe everyone is able to find own way, something that actually works. I'm not surprised your method works as I don't see anything that may cause it to fail. It's simpler, works more on the big picture. Focuses on actual food, not nutrients and micro-management. I guess you learned to trust your judgment and this may be a key here why I still need those numbers to be more-or-less-but-better-more-than-less accurate. So I can only envy you. Don't understand me like I'm trying to prove my method is better or something like that. That's not my point at all. My way may be useful for example for somebody who just starts and sticking with a diet is difficult but I believe gradually one should go towards simplicity like for example the way you described.

Myself, I envy the people who actually don't have to log anything and they eat healthily and don't overeat 🙂 In my mind it's like a super-power 🙂 Overeating was my big problem and for that reason, I had to follow raw numbers to get myself from where I was in April to where I am now. If I think that it is possible to stay fit without such a trickery it just blows my mind but thinking deeper, most of the world doesn't do any counting and stay fit. In the long term logging should not really be a way of living but once started and "mastered" it's hard to get it out of the head. I take small steps to relax constraints like grabbing small snacks which don't go into the log but then I can't stop thinking that I didn't log it. So hopefully gradually I'll get to the point where logging won't be necessary and will be replaced by bit of trust, knowledge and self-control.

[Daves_Not_Here]

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@WavyDavey wrote:

I think the primary reason is that it's a pain in the **ahem**. Especially recipe-based ones or foods that aren't in the database at all (sorry UK fit-bitters). There are multiple entries for some foods that contain differing nutritional information from each other and from the packaging.

The second reason one might no food log is that it's not totally accurate. How many calories are there in that banana you bought? Unless one is nuts about weighing all the food, it's going to be a "guestimate". Portion size varies.

Even with logging, there's a tendency to forget to report some foods or under-reporting in general to avoid facing a real caloric deficit.

The third reason, and the one that I am looking at, is a desire to be able to eat intuitively without having to track everything. 

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@WavyDavey -- I want to offer a contrary viewpoint in a friendly way.  Not in the spirit of debate but of dialectic.

My opinion is that the benefit of logging food is in the process, not the specific totals.  People who are struggling to lose weight and are not logging their food generally find that when they start logging, they start losing.  (So if you can lose or maintain weight without logging, I can't see why it would be worth the time and effort to log, unless you want to track nutrients.)

For those of us for whom the process of logging helps, accuracy is immaterial.  I know my measurements have errors.  Don't care as long as it results in my losing/controlling my weight.  (plus, I would suggest the errors tend to cancel out over time)

As for the PITA factor, I find being obese to be a Huge PITA, so if the small chore of logging my food accelerates me away from that state, sign me up.  A lot easier than killing myself for months at the gym with no results.

As far as eating intuitively, all of us who are obese have done that, that's how we got fat.  I'd love to eat whatever I want and be skinny.  Can't.  Maybe others can, but if logging gets me where I need to be, I'll give up intuitive eating.  Plus, I think a period of logging helps me to calibrate my eye so that I have a more intuitive feel for how much I actually consume.     

As to the tendency to under-report, I think you've hit on a major point.  Overeating is partly a behaviorial problem involving our human inclination to deceive ourselves.  When I'm logging food and I find myself tempted to underreport, cognitive dissonence kicks in and forces me to face that frailty.  My inner dialog becomes, "what the hell are you doing?  Log the food already!  If you don't want to log it, don't eat it!"

[rachiti]

I would disagree about obesity occurring solely from overeating and an inability to intuitively eat being unobtainable for someone obese trying to lose weight.  M weight gain came partially from an undertreated thyroid condition which affected my metabolism.  I went from overweight to morbidly obese...but I've never been "skinny".  

After 18 months of tracking my food in ounces, I can stay at my calories as long as I only eat when I'm hungry, have what I know are appropriately sized portions, stay away from "trigger" foods that I KNOW I will overeat on every single time - lasagna, for example, and stop eating before I feel full...just less hungry...give myself 30 minutes and if I'm still hungry, eat something else.  For some people who have always been skinny, they were just intuitive eaters all along...for others of us it's a learned skill which requires diligence to maintain.  Yes, I still track my eating but I find that if I follow the eat when I'm hungry and wait to see if I'm full I usually come up right around my target caloric intake even if I don't tally up my foods until the end of the day (I tell my Echo what I've eaten as I weigh or eat it, I just don't add them up).  So, I would say that I've learned how to become an intuitive eater IF I stay on track.  However, if I get too comfortable and eat even when I'm not hungry or stop filling up on fruits & veggies, then my weight does go up a pound or two a month.  I keep tracking because I'm not done with my weight loss yet.  Once I reach my goal weight, I plan to stop tracking as long as my weight stays within a few pounds of my target.

[Baltoscott]

What an awesome writeup @SunsetRunner.  I also use MFP.  I save meals and use that a lot for breakfasts (usually at home) and lunches (usually out) because I have a lot of the same things.  One thing I like about using meals is that that you can do some fraction of a "serving" and it applies to math to each ingredient before dumping all the ingredients into your current meal.  You can then change individual quantities or items if what you had today is a little different than when you set up the meal the first time.

I really like your idea of equating "servings" in recipes to grams.  Makes the recipe feature much more useful since once the recipe is setup you no longer have any idea how big the serving was, and logging the recipe just puts that item in your daily food log, rather than the individual ingredients.  

[SunsetRunner]

@Baltoscott, unfortunately, MFP is far from being perfect and it depends on the use-case whether I go with meal or recipe or mixing both. Meal gives you an advantage of logging each ingredient into your diary so that you can modify any value later by hand but there are two issues I find. One is the simple math you mentioned, when you compute how much of the serving you take. Yes, it is simple. Should it be necessary? No, and this is that tedious and annoying part of using "meals". Also somehow developers never thought of grouping ingredients to able to add meal as one entry with the possibility of unrolling and modifying ingredients. This way meal and the recipe could actually become one thing. So if your meal contains like 10-20 ingredients then all of them will appear pasted flatly in your log. And there is no undo option so if you make a mistake you need to remove ingredients from the log one by one. That's why I prefer to use recipes - because it is a single entry in the diary and the trick with servings saves my time I would spend on manual counting. But recipes have also issues. One is that the only measure of a recipe is serving, you can't add a custom picture and wait for this - you cannot copy a recipe to make different variations of it ( the users asked for this feature for five years ). As much as I like MFP, I think it could be made more user-friendly and logging process could be less of a chore if only designers thought of certain UX related issues. Instead, I have an impression as if two teams worked on the "creating food" module, one came up with "meals", the other came up with "recipes" and somebody decided to implement both into final product because nothing can go wasted 🙂 So we have neither module developed perfect and both essentially are exactly the same thing. Sometimes I just create a meal out of recipes ( for example combining pasta sauce with different types of pasta etc. ). My breakfast usually can be copied right away from the meal as what I change are proportions and sometimes I add one thing removing something else. But here we talking about food which is made of just 4-5 ingredients. When it comes to cooking a bigger meal I go with the recipe because I can't stand flooding my log with 20 entries. Moreover, if you combine two such meals ( the number of meal categories during a day is also limited after all ) then you don't know which ingredients belong to which meal. This is a part of finding own way of logging and that's why I follow certain patterns which workaround mentioned problems. I think for some people this may be offputting too ( and I wouldn't be surprised if logging would appear to be a tedious struggle and pain ). I'm actually wondering if there is any other app which solves problems I described.

[Mukluk4]

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@Daves_Not_Here wrote:

I'm curious what others think about this:  I notice that a lot of people who express frustration at not being able to lose weight seem weirdly reluctant to log their food intake.  Speaking for myself, 6 months ago, I tried to increase my activity level and tweak my eating without logging my food but got nowhere and had to "throw in the towel".  Once I started logging, the weight started coming off.

And my excuses were pretty silly:  TIME - I'm willing to spend hours working out and not losing weight but I can't take the few minutes to log my food which I know will result in weight loss.  PERFECTION - there are errors involved in measuring calories eaten so I won't do it at all.  HELPLESSNESS - The process of logging food is too difficult for me even though I am a semi-literate adult who functions in the world.  KNOW IT ALL - I just know I have a calorie deficit even though I haven't lost weight for months.

Why the weird resistance?  My hypothesis is that we subconsciously know that logging our food will reveal that we eat more calories than we think, and just don't want to face it -- same as how we don't want to step on the scales after a day of binge-eating.   What do you guys think?

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The problem is that people have the idea that "lose weight" and "look more attractive" are the same thing when in reality they may not be.  I used to log what I was eating and the way that my day worked out (most of my heavy activity occurred after supper and wasn't consistent day to day), Some days I would be over, others spot on, and most often I was significantly undernourished.  

I play sports and thought losing some of the extra weight would assist in what I was trying to do.  It was true when I went from 340 to 270, but when I dropped to 250 I wasn't performing as well and didn't look the part.  

Cut to the past 6 months in which I did some reading on athletes and recovery and realized that I wasnt eating enough.  As of now, my cardio has stayed pretty consistent, but I've upped the gym time to about 6-7 hours a week, eat what I want (so great!), lost 5 inches in my waist, developed more speed, flexibility, and endurance. 

People have asked me how I've lost weight and the reality is that I haven't, I've actually gained 20 pounds over this time period but it's carried differently.

[Baltoscott]

@SunsetRunner -- It is really interesting how certain apps develop over time and how hard it is to change an approach that has become second nature to the installed user-base even if there is a "better way."  Your write-up of recipes makes me realize they can be more useful in some ways than meals, but I will probably continue to use meals because using them is second nature for most of my logging.  

I started logging more seriously back in January while I was trying to lose weight, and I've committed to doing it throughout 2017 even though I am in my goal range.  I'm really kind of surprised I've been able to keep it up this long, but it has become second nature to contemporaneously log most of my food.  At the moment I am trying to build muscle and plan to go though a couple of bulk and cutting cycles over the next 6 months or so.  I will keep logging during that period so I've got some good data to look back on while I try to lower my fat percentage at various weights. 

As you say, MFP is far from perfect, and I agree that they should just make the meal and recipe one thing by allowing you to log a meal as a single entry (with an associated measure other than a "serving") but then let you unroll it to modify individual ingredients.   Still, even with its flaws, it is pretty easy to work with.

[Stevinlondon]

Haha I understand exactly and I do hope one day you log some foods into your FB it's just amazing, and really come on you can do it, you know you can.....:-) Once you put them in (you can log all the different exercises you do as well) it's as if FB is unique to you. Your foods and your exercises become your favourites and are top of the database. I've migrated 100% to FB granted it took me a short time to add the foods and exercises. So get the most out of your investment and Log a food at a time you'll never look at a jaffa cake the same way again, honest!!! good luck 

[Stevinlondon]

I've found the opposite for my weight realignment and hope I'm not alone. I gym often and burn a lot of calories during a workout, after the gym, it's as if I've reset my daily allowance and its impossible to consume the calories I have left. Yesterday evening after gym FB advised I had c2500 calories left for the rest of the evening, I've lost 20kgs and never once fasted. I eat pretty much what I like all the time.

[Stevinlondon]

You are amazingly well organised well done. I hope it is producing the results you seek. In a smaller way I too am organised, you are inspirational thank you

[Stevinlondon]

Not logging in the kitchen and figuring calories by eye is quite a skill many including myself will struggle to acquire. Have you lost weight? 

[Daves_Not_Here]

The lightbulb went off for me in the last few weeks -- the value for me in logging my food is not in the numbers, but in the process itself.  In the same way that tracking your daily expenditures controls overspending, tracking your food controls overeating.

And it gives me visibility into the impact of mindless snacking and grazing, which is very easy to overlook.  And the thing I like about Fitbit's tracker is how if I overeat early in the day, it puts on the brakes.  There have been several times that I've gotten to 10:30 AM and realized that I have very little budget left for the rest of the day, so I need to act accordingly.  If I were to have eaten "intuitively", I would have been over.

[Baltoscott]

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@Daves_Not_Here wrote:

The lightbulb went off for me in the last few weeks -- the value for me in logging my food is not in the numbers, but in the process itself.  In the same way that tracking your daily expenditures controls overspending, tracking your food controls overeating.

...

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Yep.  I always resist it, but I've notice that writing things down in other aspects of life helps me get things done as well.  An old practice I restarted at work is writing down daily goals each day.  There are always fires to put out and unexpected tasks getting thrown my way, but spending a few minutes in the morning writing down the four or five things I need to keep in focus and move forward on helps me ... keep them in focus and move forward as I move from one fire to the next 🙂 

I log my food when I eat it (instead at the end of the day) and I think the helps raise awareness not only of what I just ate, but also what I can do for the rest of the day. 

[Daves_Not_Here]

Agreeing with @Baltoscott about logging as you go, and taking it to the next step:  at breakfast, I log what I'm eating, plus whatever I'm taking with me for lunch, snacks and dinner.  That way, I can eat from my stash without logging and know how much more I can eat for the day.  If I waited until the end of the day, I'd surely miss things and or procrastinate. 

[SunsetRunner]

Total agreement. At some point, logging isn't about numbers but about a feeling of being in control. The logging doesn't stop me from overeating or, now, grabbing a doughnut from time to time 😉 But it gives me an indication that I acknowledged the fact of eating too much/too less/healthy/unhealthy. Numbers matter only when I see things going out of the roof ( although logging itself stops me from going to such extremes ). I think that I also found some food balance to maintain my weight ( next weeks will show if it works ). Still, I do log my food with the same level of detail. Every recipe and every ingredient. I like to know for example that this meal is rich in proteins and this one is rich in healthy fats while this one provides the nice start of the day with carbs etc. More often I check the breakdown of macro and micro-nutrients than calories but I'm not going crazy about it.

I used to do "fast-forward" logging but since I moved and now live 4 minutes walk from my workplace I don't do that anymore. I eat my lunch at home. It dramatically improved quality of my lunch as it's always freshly cooked with all fresh ingredients ( with exception of meals which need time to come with flavours like stews or soups - I prefer to eat a day old one than fresh ). However, doing that and having 1hr for my lunch I needed to get more efficient with logging ( cooking and logging must go in parallel ). That's why I introduced the notepad ( not to high-tech 😄 ) and printouts of barcodes. Within 1hr I can cook, eat and log and still have 15-30min free time, so there is no real reason for me to drop logging even due to such tight time constraints.

Offtopic, I've been thinking about food scale that would have a built-in barcode scanner and either wifi or BT connection with apps. How cool would it be! Weigh, scan at the same time and add to the recipe which is being uploaded to any of the mobile apps it would interface with ( Fitbit, MFP, anything ).

[Daves_Not_Here]

@SunsetRunner - I've thought about a wireless food scale as well and for the same reasons.  Seems like a natural fit for anyone who logs their food into an app.

Here's one I googled:  https://www.smartdietscale.com/  - no idea how well it works.

[2ctsCyn]

The Fitbit food database is not easy to use. Finding what to choose to log what I eat has been challenging due to the many home cooked meals we eat. Are they more or less calories than what I found in the food database for Restaurants? And it could even be what I would have thought as basic ingredients like bread toast, Eggs, rice, hamburger, etc. Maybe a way to scan the bar code of the product I use and see if it is already in the system? And what about potluck parties like Thanksgiving Dinner? How to log any of that?

But I just got my Fit Bit in Oct so my learning curve is steep.

[Daves_Not_Here]

Hi @2ctsCyn -- I struggle with the same things.  I find the restaurant meals and potluck items to be the most challenging.  Some people here suggest that MyFitnessPal has easier food logging.  It can be connected to bring the food items across to Fitbit.

The Fitbit app on your phone does have barcode scanning.  You can use it to scan the individual ingredients.  

My practice for homemade cooking is to record all the ingredients into a single large meal serving, and then record the fraction of a portion I eat.  In other words, if I make a casserole that has 10 portions, I'll record all the ingredients into say a 1,500 calorie serving, and then log 0.10 of a serving, which shows as 150 calories.

Also, I have a kitchen scale and make a game of seeing how close my eyeball can estimate weights before I look at the scale.  Over time, you will develop a feel for estimating.  For potluck or restaurant items, I just pull up something that looks close and log it.  Accuracy doesn't really matter as much as making sure you log something reasonable.

Hope this helps!