Do you ever go on diets to lose weight, just to find that you have gained that same weight all over again after a few months? What about eating food that gives you side effects such as bloating, gas or even allergic reactions? These are all good reasons to start a food diary. Since we humans eat a large variety of food, it’s hard to pinpoint exactly what causes us to lose weight, gain weight or have certain reactions to food. Starting a food diary can be beneficial to create awareness around our diets, it creates accountability and it helps identify what we are eating on a daily basis and on a much larger scale. Ultimately this helps crowd out the unhealthy food with more nutritionally dense foods and it helps get rid of food that does not serve you anymore. 

One of the most urgent reasons to create a food diary is to identify what causes allergic reactions and food sensitivities. Allergic reactions can be very serious, so I would first consult a physician before going on to experiment with a food diary. If your symptoms are more mild and it seems like certain foods give you bloating and gas, it’s easier to create a diary on your own because the stakes are not as high as going into anaphylactic shock. This process is a good way to start an elimination diet. People who experience IBS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome) experience the symptoms that I’ve described earlier that are not as severe as allergic reactions (bloating, gas etc). When you experience these kinds of symptoms, it’s good to keep track of what you are eating in order to improve your digestive experience. For others, it’s good to keep track of what kind of food you’re eating in order to eliminate junk food and heavily processed food. 

According to Robin Berzin, MD who is a functional medicine practitioner, our bodies deal with inflammation due to many factors.  Some of those factors include how you are born (C-section or vaginal birth), if you were breastfed, if you had lots of antibiotics early in life, if you have used OTC (over-the-counter) pain medications, if you have alcohol from time to time, if you have a history of parasites or major GI (gastro intestinal) illness, and lastly if you are under a lot of stress. Berzin states that our immune systems are an ecosystem that is defined much more by bacteria than it is by us. Additionally, Berzin informs us that in 2008 the National Institute of health created the Human Biome Project in an effort to better understand the bacteria that live on us and inside of us. As a result they discovered that there are over 2,000 strains of bacteria in and outside of us and that there are 10x more bacterial cells inside of us then there are cells that make up our body. This project discovered that these bacteria are breaking down our food, metabolizing our drugs, they help detoxify us and mature our immune system after we’re born. Given these facts, and knowing now that our immune system is mostly in our digestive tract, we can say that what we eat and our interactions with our environment determine how well our body can defend us from outside invaders that are harmful to our body. With this information in mind, we need to take care of our microbiome and eat healthy food that doesn’t trigger negative reactions.  As a result, everyone has a unique diet and one person’s food can be another person’s poison.

Some of the most inflammatory foods out there are peanuts, wheat, soy, milk, fish, shellfish, tree nuts and eggs. In an elimination diet, you would cut out all of these foods for a week and then slowly reintroduce these foods one at a time every three days to see how each individual food source affects your body. This could be done with many more food sources and drinks such as caffeine and alcohol. It just depends on what you are having issues with. The food diary is a great way to keep track of the food you’re eating, but also your connected feelings around the food you eat.This is a big part of the food diary because we all have feelings associated with food that give us clues as to what is beneficial and what isn’t. If you feel extremely jittery and dehydrated, which leads to headaches and stress after drinking one cup of coffee maybe it’s a good idea to reexamine why you’re drinking coffee in the first place, and why you aren’t drinking water to rehydrate yourself after that cup of coffee. It’s also important to note your physical experience after eating and drinking. In the coffee example one cup of coffee that might have been well-intended became a source of stress and the physical symptoms were the jitters, dehydration and a headache. Emotional and physical reactions are so intertwined, it’s almost impossible to talk about one without the other. 

Creating mindfulness around our diets is great for all of the reasons above as well as for setting intentions to improve our diets. Once you can identify the food and drinks that no longer serve you, you can explore different options that will improve your mood, health, and create a healthy weight as a result. Diets don’t work when they are temporary solutions for lifelong problems. As we all age, managing health and weight become much more challenging because it’s more difficult to want to change our habits as we get older. It’s not impossible to change our diets and habits as we age, but as a result, we experience more health issues versus starting to change our habits when we are younger. It’s easy to ignore symptoms that we experience from eating and drinking different things, especially if we love eating and drinking them, but the truth is that there are so many more options and varieties of food that we can just crowd out all of the bad food and drinks with new and exciting recipes. In my health coaching certification course at IIN (Institute for Integrative Nutrition) they taught us about crowding out, it’s a phrase used to describe adding more whole foods into your diet versus thinking about removing so much of your favorite foods out of your diet. It’s a positive way to see your diet evolve into something more delicious and nutritious! Why should you “cry over spilled milk” when the milk was probably creating gas and bloating from being lactose intolerant? We are in an era where the options are endless for milk alternatives, so when life gives you lemons, make lemonade! 

I hope this helps you see how beneficial food diaries can be to see what negatively triggers your body on a physical and emotional level. There are different ways to approach this exercise, but what matters is to find a way that best suits you. If you feel like you need to go into an elimination diet, that’s one option and if you feel like you just need to see what kinds of foods make you go into a bad mood, that is also valid. Everyone is unique and it’s important to do what works for you. The bigger picture is to remember that there are a lot of delicious and healthy options waiting for you on the other side of the spectrum. Remember that your health journey is unique, and that comparing yourself to others is an unhealthy habit that can be detrimental to your mental health. Appreciate your body for keeping you alive and well. It’s all about progress, not perfection!