Week 2: The Unexamined Food

As Aristotle should have said, "The unexamined food is not worth eating." We really do not know what we are eating. We coast through our dietary day without thought. 

I suggest you think. I know thinking is hard, especially about something we are not used to thinking about.  

The reason I know that diets don't work is from hard personal experience. I actually went on the medically supervised fast that Oprah went on--Optifast. I basically ate nothing but drank 600 calories a day for months. I lost 80 pounds. But of course I gained most of it back. The Optifast program tried really hard to teach us the right way to eat, but it did not work. 

But one of the most interesting, and for me helpful, memories from that period was that on the first week we did not fast. We ate normally. The only requirement for that first week was that we write down everything we ate. I am not sure why, maybe I was embarrassed to discover what I was really eating, but I lost the most weight that first week eating whatever I wanted. I lost 8 pounds. 

So the first step on our journey is to write down everything we eat. Yes, I hear what you are grumbling to yourself right now. I am not saying it is easy, but with modern technology with an iDevice or Android it is surprisingly easy. Here is a tutorial for the program I use, FitnessPal. 

FitnessPal does have some issues. Some of the entries have typos and are not complete in the nutrient information. But personally I have found no tool as helpful as keeping track of what you eat. If you don't have a portable device, the same thing can be done on the website. 

Do not at this time try to limit what you eat. The goal for the next week is to know what you are eating right now, to know what your problem areas are. Just set a higher level for your calories, and try to ignore FitnessPal's dietary recommendations as they assume you want to eat high carb/low fat. You may, but we will talk about this later.  

Knowledge is power. 

(If you have not yet gone to your doctor, do so.)