Noticing Habits - Discoveries From My Food Journal
Published on Mar 21st, 2008 in food journal with
Since I’ve been keeping a food journal I’ve noticed a couple of things. First, I seem to crave something sweet after I eat, but it can’t be just any sweet. If I try to eat what I’m not craving - say a banana when I really want a big, chewy cookie - I’ll keep grazing and end up eating even more food than if I had just gone with the big, chewy cookie in the first place!
I usually want something that has a bread-like consistency, i.e. sweet bread, cake, or a homemade cookie. Candies and chocolates just don’t satisfy me. Prepackaged sweets don’t either. I want the high quality junk! 
Well, I guess that’s good. At least I’m becoming choosy about the sugar I put in my body!
The down side is fruit also doesn’t work. And because my taste in sweets is becoming more high maintenance, I may have to either buy good quality (and probably more expensive) desserts or set aside time to bake them myself! Hopefully fruit will win over my sweet tooth in time.
The second tendency I’ve noticed is that I get the munchies if I’m bored, antsy, or slightly nervous. (Now if I’m very nervous, such as right before singing in a big performance, I can’t eat at all!) The munchies for me are predominate at work… and I’m still figuring out why. It’s not that I have a stressful job. Compared to what I was doing before, this is a piece of cake! Um… OK, maybe I shouldn’t have said “cake.” But anyway, my current job is a lot more laid back than what I used to do.
But maybe that’s the issue. This job is very different from what I was used to. I experienced fast-paced action some of the time in my previous job. I guess I got the “high” from adrenaline rushes instead of sugar! There are no huge adrenaline rushes or life-or-death emergencies in my current position. In my last job there were days it was so busy I was lucky to eat lunch! In this job… well, sometimes I get bored.
But I shouldn’t complain. I have a good job that pays the bills and has “normal” hours. Also, I’ve only been working in my current position for 5 months, so perhaps I need to give myself some more time to get used to the change in pace and job duties.
Isn’t it interesting how your feelings can affect your eating? This journey towards breaking my sugar addiction has been an interesting one so far, that’s for sure!
I’d say my food journal is working rather well. At the very least it’s shown me some things about myself that I haven’t noticed. And if I don’t know those things exist, how can I change them?
