Why Should You Keep A Food Diary?

By Letizia L

Keeping a food diary can be a very useful technique to start self-observing and become more aware of our daily food choices.

The key to making the most of this tool is not to exercise control with rigidity and harshness, which in the long run can reveal an obsessive and frustrating attitude, but to be in a deeper connection with the body and mind.

How do you start keeping a food diary?

First of all, it is important to remember that the format can be different depending on the habits and needs of the person. A food diary is a way of self-monitoring: technically it would be enough to write what you eat and when. However, you can and should add a further component: emotion and social implications.

What is the thrill of your comfort food?

The emotion factor is indicative and very valuable, because often, especially when there is a more serious problem with respect to nutrition, as well as in cases of dietary errors, it is not only the choice of the food itself that makes the difference, or the temptation of the moment but our attitude towards what we eat.

How do you behave when you are sad or are tired and angry? What are you eating at these moments? Keeping a food diary becomes an exercise that can raise our level of food awareness and learn to observe our eating habits.

Understanding the mistakes you make allows you to reflect on the change to be made. For example, if the evening is the time when you tend to eat more because you arrive home tired and hungry, it becomes easier to identify the right strategy for a healthy dinner.

Putting one’s eating habits on paper allows us to honestly observe our daily mistakes. Thanks to the food diary we have the opportunity to become more aware of our moments of vulnerability. Yes, because in the presence of an unbalanced diet we should start wondering what emotions we feel in front of food.

What do you eat when hunger strikes?