Tracking food seems like one of those things that no one used to do and suddenly everyone says is necessary. Why is this suddenly a thing?
I honestly think it comes down to how much our lives have changed over the years.
Life used to be a lot more simple. Less distractions, less access to food at all times, more time spent at the dinner table with your family. We have a lot more to contend with at this point in time.
Constant access to food is a big one. It is significantly less convenient to find healthy food! Most food is hyper palatable and right at our fingertips.
Finding a simple meal with protein and vegetables? Hard. Eating 1000 calories between a coffee and a muffin? Not hard at all.
Finding a quick, healthy snack? Hard. Finding a candy bar? They’re everywhere you look.
What’s more, most of these hyper palatable foods don’t fill us up at all and never provide the brain with the proper hunger cues it needs.
Think of this for a moment:
Make a meal at home: 6oz steak, 200g broccoli, 100g of sweet potatoes.
Or eat: 1 bagel with cream cheese
The calories are going to be comparable, but meal A is going to fill you up faster and keep you satisfied for longer. The bagel will go down easy, and within no time you’ll be feeling hungry again.
Why is this important?
Because people get caught up in “good food” vs “bad food” rather than diving it to how far we’ve come from eating like normal human beings.
It’s so easy to go out and eat 2000 calories and feel like you barely ate anything all day. Most of us are so busy we might even forget all the things we’ve snacked on throughout the day.
What does this have to do with tracking?
Tracking can help bring awareness back in to our diet. We’ve talked to so many people who believe they eat healthy, only to start tracking and realize they’re skipping a couple meals a day and snacking more than they realized. What’s cool about this is you may learn that your problem with progress actually stems from not eating enough of the right foods, not just from eating too much or being broken.
This doesn’t mean you need to track forever! Tracking for a week might be all you need to find the necessary information to make changes.
Have you ever tried tracking your food?