Hi, Friends!  How was your weekend?  Ours was low key, and Mr. Hungry has today off, so our weekend is a bit extended!  Yippee! My favorite shot of dog training, which was TERRIBLE this week.  She just would not focus, man I hope we can rally for the graduation in two weeks!

I got a couple of great workouts including 6.5 miles run with Nala (Friday morning so possibly the reason she was so terrible at training), a metabolic style killer workout (I’ll share soon) and a killer 2-mile interval workout that looked like this one.

This week in our 52 weeks to 52 healthy habits series is the end of the mini-series on intuitive eating.  I may incorporate more tips later on in the year, but right now you have had a great start developing a few vital intuitive eating habits.  This week you might think that recording your meals is the opposite of intuitive eating, but I think it might help you to be a better intuitive eater.

Benefits to recording your meals can include helping you to:

1. identify patterns of emotional eating (if you record hunger cues which I often have my clients do)
2. determine how full your meals are keeping you and what kind of foods keep you the most full for the longest
3. determine if your meals are balanced
4. determine if your fueling/refueling your workouts/training appropriately
5. find out if you are getting enough of certain foods such as veggies, protein or healthy fat
6. stay accountable & encourage you to make better food choices
7. determine weekly patterns – how many times a week you treat yourself
8. determine correct portion sizes
9. reinvigorate your commitment to healthy eating
10. determine if changes you make to your diet or foods are desirable
11. identification of potential food sensitivities
12. many other benefits

I once had a client ask me, “Should I have to record my meals forever?” 

Interesting question and the answer is yes and no.  In my opinion, no you shouldn’t need to rely on recording your meals forever to obtain/maintain a healthy body composition.  If you are practicing all the healthy habits that you’ve been learning in this series, then no, not really.  However, keep in mind we are up against a lot in this technology driven, fast-paced world we live in now.  Sometimes due to fluctuations in sleep, exercise, water, and stress our hunger cues do become somewhat unreliable.

Not enough sleep and extra stress may cause us to reach for calorie dense snacks when we might otherwise reach for veggies.  Recording your meals may help you identify those patterns right away and stop them before they cause weight gain or stop weight loss.  They keep us accountable and show us exactly how much and what we’ve eaten in a nonjudgmental way (unlike the scale.)

Most people I know that successfully monitor their weight, specifically after weight loss, have some feedback mechanism to help them get on track. (However, for  those who have never gained weight, natural intuitive eaters like my husband, this seems not to be as much of a problem) For many healthy living bloggers, like myself, it’s recording some of their meals on the blog, social media, etc. that keeps them on track and going strong.  Recording some of my meals helps me check in and evaluate what my eating habits are like every so often.  Other people will track their food for 1-2 days until they get back on track and then go on without tracking. On the flip side, you can get carried away and get too obsessive about it which is not being intuitive with your eating (see my thoughts on calorie counting here).  So finding a way to record your meals every once in a while as a way to check in with yourself can help keep you on track and become a better intuitive eater by identifying patterns of hunger, choices, times, etc.   There are many different options so it might take some trial and error to find what works best for you.

Options:

1. Calorie Tracking Apps 
   • Pros – Convenient and portable (in your phone)
   • Cons – Can’t record any additional information that relates to intuitive eating – hunger cues, time of the meal, etc. Can also cause an obsession with calories or macros which should vary day to support your metabolism.
2. Tracking Foods In Phone – Notes App
   • Pros – convenient and portable, flexibility to include whatever you want
   • Cons – inconvenient to track calories or macros (i think this is a positive)
3. Tracking Foods In Notebook
   • Pros – convenient and portable, flexibility to include whatever you want
   • Cons – inconvenient to track calories or macros (i think this is a positive)
4. Taking Pictures Of Food 
   • Pros- convenient and portable, easily see portion sizes, may record time automatically, has you stop and pause before the meal by taking a picture
   • Cons – inconvenient to categorize, stigmatized in some social settings, can’t record additional information such as hunger cues

Recording meals is not the right method for everyone, just like a Vegetarian or Paleo diet isn’t right for everyone, but it can help you gain insight and become a better intuitive eater in the long run. In this series we’ve covered some of the important principles of intuitive eating yet, we have barely scratched the surface.  Intuitive eating principles address your underlying mindset toward food, including getting rid of labeling food (good and bad) and stripping your diet of restriction and limitations.  If you’ve spent time jumping from diet to diet, chronically counting calories/points/macros and feel you would benefit from improving your relationship with food I’m happy to work one on one with you.  Please visit my nutrition services website www.hungryhobbyrd.com for more information and to set up an appointment.

 

Questions of the day:

Do you track your food?  What method do you use?  

What was the last movie you saw in theaters?

52 HEALTHY HABITS IN 52 WEEKS SERIES:

The 52 Healthy Habits Series is about ditching the diet mindset and making small changes to improve health overall naturally leading to a healthy body composition, increased energy and improved health. Please follow along and check out the past weeks!

• Week 52: Healthy Habits Wrap Up
• Week 51: Nightly Reflection
• Week 50: Limit Harmful Chemicals
• Week 49: Find Your Tribe
• Week 48: Cultivating Positivity
• Week 47: Healthy Thanksgiving Tips
• Week 46: Check In
• Week 45: Mobility – Foam Rolling
• Week 44: HIIT Training
• Week 43: LISS or Steady State Cardio
• Week 42: Limit Alcohol
• Week 41: Eat White, Wait What?
• Week 40: Eat Blue & Purple
• Week 39: Eat Green
• Week 38: Eat Yellow/Orange
• Week 37: Eat Red
• Week 36: Learn Which Foods to Purchase Organic
• Week 35: Read the Ingredient List!
• Week 34: Focus.
• Week 33: Chew Your Food!
• Week 32: Meditation
• Week 31: Gratitude Journaling
• Week 30: Plan & Revamp Dessert- 20 Healthy Ideas
• Week 29: Two fistfuls of veggies per meal
• Week 28: Get In Veggies At Breakfast
• Week 27: Healthy Veggie Snacks
• Week 26: Nourishing Fats for the Gut (Healthy Digestion Part 4)
• Week 25: Keeping Regular – The Other Fiber (Healthy Digestion Part 3)
• Week 24: Feed The Probiotics With Prebiotic Fiber (Healthy Digestion Part 2)
• Week 23: Amazing Health Benefits of Probiotics (Healthy Digestion Part 1)
• Week 22: Check In
• Week 21: What You Will Learn From Recording Your Meals (Intuitive Eating Series Part 4)
• Week 20: Eat Until 80% Full (Hara Hachi Bu) (Intuitive Eating Series Part 3)
• Week 19: Limit Distractions While Eating (Intuitive Eating Series Part 2)
• Week 18: Gaging Your Hunger Cues (Intuitive Eating Series Part 1)
• Week 17: 10,000 Steps Per Day
• Week 16: Assess Your Caffeine Intake
• Week 15: Decrease Sugar Intake
• Week 14: Healthy Coffee Creamers (upgrade yours)
• Week 13: 3 Month Check In
• Week 12: Sleep Enough & Sleep Better
• Week 11: Schedule Your Workouts
• Week 10: Pack A Healthy Lunch (5 Ways to Create Endless Combinations)
• Week 9: Prioritizing Protein
• Week 8: How and What to Meal Prep
• Week 7: Create & Stick To Your Healthy Meal Plan
• Week 6: Get Enough Omega-3’s (Fight Inflammation)
• Week 5: What Is A Healthy Fat & How To Get Enough (Include Healthy Fats)
• Week 4: How to Spot A Healthy Carbohydrate (Upgrade Your Carbs)
• Week 3: Tips to Increase Veggie Intake (Eat Veggies)
• Week 2: 15 Healthy On the Go Breakfast Ideas (Eat BF Challenge)
• Week 1: Tips to Drink More Water