To Sleeve (or Not to Sleeve) Series - #6, Food Journaling

(This is part of a series I posted on my other (formerly anonymous) blog, tobypass.wordpress.com)

Over the years I’ve been on many different ‘diets’. As a consequence of some of these (namely Weight Watchers), I had to keep a careful tally of my daily caloric/nutritional intake. This was always a challenge and in some ways contributed to me feeling additionally neurotic about food. (I.e. even though I had been eating far too much before — I wasn’t obsessing about it in between meals, I didn’t feel hungry or deprived, I didn’t have cravings except when it was actually time to decide what to eat). As soon as I started keeping track, it was like every waking moment became ‘food-planning central’.

This past week, I started keeping track pretty carefully once again. This time, however, my intention is that this will be a permanent addition to my life. I’m in the physical shape I’m in part because I often have been so entirely unconscious about my eating. If asked to give an account, for many days I couldn’t even give you a good estimate of quantities or even items I had eaten. It’s like I become a zombie — mindlessly vacuuming up whatever is around me: cold cereal and leftovers, chicken wings and ice cream, smoothies and tall glasses of milk.

At the same time however, I’m also kind of a foodie. Over the past decade I’ve grown in my affinity for cooking. I’m the main chef in my home. I cook almost every day. I plan meals. I look up recipes online. for a season, I watched a lot of TV cooking shows (Alton Brown is my favorite – I identify with the inner nerd). So while I have had moments of pure unconscious inhalation, I also have moments of hyper-consciousness. Loving food entirely too much and feasting entirely too often. If every meal is “special” then no meals are special.

A friend commented to me one time when we were comparing food budgets – “Man, you guys eat better than anyone I know!” I don’t believe malice was intended — but it stung a little, I’ve gotta admit.

One hope in keeping a record of my diet is to help me to internalize — more accurately — food nutrition and values. As I alluded in a previous post, I grew up in a pretty food-literate culture, so I’ve inherited some good bones (proteins, types of carbohydrates, kinds of fats, fiber, whole food vs. processed, micronutrients & trace elements, etc.) — but what I lack is a solid awareness of caloric properties and abilities to accurately estimate quantities.

How many calories are in a cup of strawberries?
I have no idea. I could guess. But it literally would only be that.

How would that compare to say, a cup of spaghetti?
My guess is that spaghetti would have a little more – but I really don’t know – fruit has sugar right?

Chicken breast is a good source of protein, but it isn’t all protein right? It carries calories?
What does a 6oz piece of cooked chicken even look like? How many calories does it have?

I could go on and on…

Maybe I’m not alone in this. But I feel as though this lack of intuitive judgment has been and will continue to be a handicap for me in getting healthy. And so for a good while – I think I’m gonna need accurate assistance to help me along the way. A set of trainers if you will. This morning, I used a measuring cup to measure out fruit that went into my vitamix for a morning smoothie. I wouldn’t know otherwise. Luckily I already have a good set of kitchen tools in this regard.

I really love this adjustable measuring cup from Oxo. Especially if you’re short on space, it does the job of many different smaller sized cups and also helps you guesstimate a little more accurately.

I plan to pick up a better digital kitchen scale — which will help me figure out just how much that chicken breast actually does weigh… I’m not sure if there really is a better way. Cooks Illustrated recommends the OXO one yet again so that might be it.

A third key tool I’m using is my iPhone 5S. There are dozens of apps that offer tools for tracking meals and activity – predict your metabolic burn rate given weight and height – and also offer huge databases of the nutritional content for both commercial and whole foods. I like Lifehacker.com and this post has a pretty solid overview of 5 current options for food tracking apps. I’m using their second on the list “LoseIt” — and I’m finding it pretty good. But the food database isn’t the best. In the past I’ve used, MyFitnessPal and their database was huge — so I might go back to that.

In any case — this is where the rubber really meets the road and these apps are helpful because they not only provide a compact, organized platform for recording a food diary from day to day. They also contain, within themselves, data on foods — which like I’ve said, is a complete enigma for me (if not many of us).

About 5 days into it, I feel ok. Positive. Hopeful. Eyes opening slowly to my new reality.

I’ve shed a few pounds but who knows where those are from…water? my liver? hopes and dreams?

We shall see what unfolds next.