I was in a conversation recently in which an interesting thought about nutrition came up. The question was whether or not some of the discussions in popular culture around food could be backfiring. Consider the film Super Size Me as an example. There, the star of the film feeds himself exclusively food form McDonald’s for an entire month. This experiment definitely served to make some important points about the dark side of fast food. On the other hand, might it also open the door to saying “well, at least I don’t eat like that guy!”
Now, my instinct tells me it would be going too far to say that a film like Super Size Me has had a far reaching effect, prompting people to think that their eating habits are actually ok when compared to the worst. However, the thought caught my attention because I do have conversations with clients who compare poor eating habits to disastrous ones with the idea of justifying eating things they know they shouldn’t. Consider a comment that a client, who badly needed a nutrition overhaul, once made to me: “well it’s not like I’m eating McDonald’s three times a day with a supersized coke!” Indeed, her diet was not that bad. However, her diet was not good either and comparing it to something worse did not alter that fact. In her mind though, somehow it did.
So, to you reader, allow me to get to the point. Avoid falling into the trap of making these kinds of comparisons when thinking about your diet. Even though you might not be making the worst choices, you might still have plenty of room for improvement. In fact, we all have room for improvement, even the best of us. The simplest way to approach healthy eating is to track it. I like to use myfitnesspal, but there are plenty of other methods of logging your food (including pencil and paper). One you have written down what you have eaten over a solid week it is usually very easy to look at it and identify patterns. You might for example be eating or drinking more of certain things than you think, or be eating more often than you think, or not often enough, or any other number of things. The key is you will see it in your own log. At this point, the key is to look at it, own it, and fix it. This is your personal food log and it is giving you a picture of you and that is the only person we are interested in, no comparisons required.