Thursday, April 30, 2015

A Case of the Food Diary Guilts

Yesterday I wrote about going to the diabetes centre for my dietician/nurse check-in. I talked about printing out two weeks of food data from My Fitness Pal. It's a great way to share my food diary and makes my life much easier.

It also makes me second guess everything I've eaten in the last few days.

Since I'm diligent about putting everything I eat into My Fitness Pal (even on those really bad days), it means that they get to see it too.

So I've had all sorts of conversations in my head about what I should and should not eat this week.

Like the conversation about whether or not I should have that chocolate? If I do, they'll see it. What if they compare the time I ate the chocolate to my blood sugar graphs and see a spike? Maybe I should just save it until next week and then have the chocolate. That way no one will know but me.

No way. I'm totally allowed to have chocolate and, if there is nothing bad in my food diary for two weeks, they won't believe it anyway. Nobody is that good. Have the damn chocolate.

One hour later: bloody hell. My blood sugar is spiking. I'm so going to get in trouble.

Or my daily conversation about nuts.

I often have some nuts as a mid-morning snack. I have a container in my lunch bag with almonds, cashews and walnuts in it. Most days I have five of each which is a great. Add a clementine or two and it's a wonderful snack. Not too calorie-heavy but enough to keep me happily full until lunch.

This week I look at them and wonder if I should have a few more just to show the dietician how diligent I am about trying to get healthy fats into my diet and how much protein I try to pack into a day. Even though it means extra calories which, technically, means that I probably shouldn't have a post-dinner frozen yogurt bar.

Twice this week I brought a big container of chopped veggies for lunch. I mashed up an avocado, poured a healthy amount of Frank's Hot Sauce over it and happily dipped fresh carrots, cucumber, red pepper and cherry tomatoes into it. Follow it up with a cup of Kefir with fruit and it's one of my favourite lunches. Since we didn't have any leftovers in the fridge for me to grab I was more than happy to have two days of this yummy feast for lunch.

Until I thought about how that would look to a dietician. The same breakfast and the same lunch two days in a row. No beans? No quinoa? Not a ton of protein. No variety in the veggies.

Tsk tsk.

Then I remind myself that they are also going to read about my five runs, four cycling workouts and 30k of walking on the golf course. And I decide not to worry one whit about what is or isn't in my food diary.

If they don't like it, well then bring it on!

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