The Dark Side of Food Journaling

For years, in my late teens and early twenties, I kept meticulous food journals. There were enough to easily fill a few neatly lined bookshelves. From a distance, they probably appear to be interesting novels or even recipe books. Some are spiral-bound, some fully stitched together. A bright array of spines awash in curly-cues and cerulean blues, their chipper appearance belying their monotonous contents. There is a dark side of these food journals.

The dark side of food journals

Like everything I record to this day, the lists of my daily food intake quickly evolved into their own secret language. Colors, dots, and stars denoted a complicated key of meanings only I could interpret. 

At one particularly low point, a column of numbers next to the foods determined the grams of fat in each food. The goal column sum was zero. When my anorexic and orthorexic behaviors progressed to bulimia, the yellow-highlighted items represented the foods I had consumed and then promptly purged.

Eventually, the food journals became less a record of my food and instead took on a life of their own. They were anonymous voices judging every morsel that passed my lips.

When I began to examine the eating disorder and its psychological underpinnings in therapy, it became clear that food journaling was a purge in and of itself. It was a way to relieve myself of the tension I built around eating. In turn, this reflected my aversion to the tension of life itself.

The urge to journal

When I started to do serious work on myself to heal, I found I could learn a lot from this habit. I could judge how many untapped feelings were free-falling through my body based on my urges to jot down the list of foods I had consumed since breakfast. To this day, I still find grocery store receipts, old credit card statements, and discarded envelopes with impromptu food lists scrawled on the back and in the margins.

Many times, these lists were tossed in the garbage immediately after writing them. As if I could just as quickly and easily erase the thoughts and feelings that sparked their penning in the first place.

Many years later I had a private nutrition practice. I did not encourage my clients to keep food journals. Instead, I preferring to teach them methods of intuitive eating.

I found that recording a list of foods, particularly for individuals who may also have underlying weight and body image issues, can be dangerous.

Keep a food journal can quickly dissolve into a dictatorial list of references. It can be a harsh reminder of everything you “should” and “should not” have eaten. Often clients do not see it as a quick overview of the nutrients your body was calling for that day. Instead the food journal became a dark tool the eating disorder feeds off of.

Intuitive Eating

This is a challenging concept for most adults to accept.

We are born with innate hunger and satiety cues that let us know when to begin eating and when to stop.

Assuming we present our bodies with a wide variety of foods and nutrients (and yes, that includes chocolate cake in addition to kale salad) we can trust our bodies.

Unfortunately, over time, our environments begin to erode our internal hunger cues. This often happens at a very young age and forces us to rely on mercurial, external references for how much and how often to eat.

This can take on many different faces. It can be as innocuous as parents encouraging children to take, “three more bites” of food or forcing them to clean their plates when they have already voiced being full. It can look like extreme restrictions imposed by parents on so-called “bad foods” like chips or cookies. And yes, it can look like keeping a food journal to inform intake, rather than relying on internal cues.

An alternative to the food journal

What I did frequently ask of my clients was to verbally recall their last 24 hours of food intake from memory. While this may be a less accurate snapshot, it provided a different kind of information. With the right probing questions, we could suss out which foods clients might be initially blocking out from memory. And we examined if those “mindless bites” served a useful purpose.

This conversation, in turn, directed clients back to the concept of mindful and intuitive eating. The goal is to rely on internal sensations and primal cues instead of external cues that are subject to change.

Avoid the dark side of food journals

Not everyone is going to develop disordered eating behaviors by using food journaling. And like a 24-hour recall, a brief 3-day use of food journaling could provide a quick aha moment for an individual or Dietitian regarding deficiencies or excessive calories in day-to-day eating habits.

But for the sake of returning to our innate ability to determine what our bodies need to function optimally, food journals may not be the gold standard.

For me, the freedom that came from discontinuing my lists mirrored the freedom I found in consuming consistent meals without purging.

And when the urge to jot down foods arises, it’s a cue for me to check in with myself to see what feelings I might be avoiding. But for now, my bookshelves are full.