Why Logging Food Makes You Want to Scream (and What to Do Instead)

Logging Food - trying to eat healthy? In this episode of Quick Wins for ADHD Moms, Jess gets real about why tracking meals is so tough for ADHD brains, and shares a simple, flexible workaround that actually works. 

Ditch the guilt, embrace repeatable meals, and discover how to make nutrition easier for you and your family. Tune in for practical tips, a dose of science, and a reminder that progress beats perfection!

Transcript

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Are you health conscious? Have you been logging food and just want to scream? Well, hey, welcome to Quick Wins for ADHD moms. I'm Jess, and today's episode is for all of us who have ever tried logging our food for like three days and then just ghosted the idea, whether it's an app or something on the side of our refrigerator because it's so annoying to do the repeated process of logging our food. Logging our food again. Yeah, I've been there. I've used Chronometer app to track my macros, and I paid for it, and then I hated it and unsubscribed from it, and then I paid for it again because. It really worked last time and it's gonna work this time, and then I get overwhelmed and then unsubscribe from it again. It's a love hate relationship. You know, I want to do well. I've seen results in the past, but at the end of the day, I just don't like tracking food. And when you have ADHD and you don't see a shortcut or that inspirational routine is just too complicated. Everything disappears. You lose interest and now you eat everything. Feel me here. So today I wanna walk you through why food logging is so hard with ADHD. Uh, maybe a simple workaround that I'm learning how to implement myself and the brain science behind why this is actually normal for us and just not a failure. So today's quick win repeatable meals. Here's the workaround that I'm going to be trying this fall as the kids go back to school and I've been reflecting on what's working and what's not working, and then you tweak the process and then the kids grow older and things change and they eat different things. So today's quick win is create two to three repeatable, macro balanced days that's going to hit your nutrition goals, and then just rotate those days. No decisions. No constant logging, just structure with flexibility. We love flexibility, but we need structure. Keep protein anchors on hand. I love having a meal planning day where we shred the chicken and then put it in the freezer and then we can grab little bags as we need it throughout the week. So protein anchors like the shredded chicken, maybe taco meat, Greek yogurt, those are really great. Um, the OCO triple Zero. You know what I'm talking about. Those are great to just grab and go, um, and then you can build simple meals around those shredded chicken taco meat, you know, whatever. So try using visual checklists like, okay, am I getting my macros? Do I have my protein, a high energy carb, a veggie, and a healthy fat? If I can check those things off three times a day, I know I'm winning even if I don't enter a single thing into my app. Now if you are new to meal planning or trying to figure out your macros, we can dive deeper into this if you're really interested. But I know that nutrition is really important for our ADHD brains and just for living a healthy life in general and showing our kids how to make good food choices, um, getting a well-balanced diet. So for our ADHD brains, why do we have to adjust how we log our food? Well, like I've said before, it gets boring. Routines are boring. We get fatigued, and fatigue is real. Logging food sounds simple. You just tap a few buttons, you add your grilled chicken and you move on with your day. And this was new chronometer was beta testing it, just snap a picture of your food and it calculates it for you. And I love this idea and I tried it and it will get better, but it's not perfect yet. So I have to go back in and adjust the actual amount of almonds I ate or confess that there's just too much cheese on my salad and it's hidden underneath the lettuce. So when logging food, if you're like me, uh, what actually happens is. You forget to log one meal or you just get bored with it and tell yourself, no, I'm, I'm rebelling against that. I'm not logging food today. And then you try to backtrack and you can't remember what you ate and it, it just feels messy. And now the kids are hungry. You are like, oh, I'll just start this over tomorrow. And when you're managing a household, maybe you work from home, you've got all these snack requests. Missing socks and your own brain noise. That tiny extra task of logging your food becomes just one thing. Too many logging. Fatigue isn't laziness. It's just decision fatigue. It's working memory overload. It's your brain saying, please stop asking me to multitask my own nutrition. Just eat a cookie. Here's the science behind food logging and fatigue, and maybe something we can do about it. The first thing is knowing what's going on in our brains and understanding how our brains work and working with our brains. Not against it because someone on YouTube had a new hack that suddenly works. So our working memory, that's the part of your brain that helps you hold multiple pieces of information at once. It's not quite as strong in ADHD brains, so remembering what you ate for breakfast while figuring out lunch wrangling, kids, calculating macros. It's just a hard ask. There's also the issue of executive function, and that's the system that helps you initiate tasks, follow through on things, and evaluate. That's also affected because logging food after you eat doesn't give you that dopamine hit. It just feels like a chore and there's no immediate payoff. And if you're already in go mode, pausing to log a meal, breaks your flow, or it's gonna make you even more late, which makes it harder to stick with consistently. So it's not a failure. We just need to figure out other ways to work with our brains. So when it comes to trying to live a healthier life and making better food choices and, and having a balanced nutrition, what is it that you need to hear today? Well, you need to hear that you don't need to be perfect. You don't need a perfect log to be consistent. Use your brain's strengths like pattern recognition and creativity to build a plan that works with you. Progress comes from repeatable habits, not from perfect tracking. And I love this one, repeatable habits, and that's what our quick win, creating rotating days of pre-planned meals and keeping it simple, but staying on track. Is such a big deal. Oh, here's something else, and this is probably for another episode about staying on top of ordering groceries so that you have the food for those rotating days. You hear me there? We're trying to create automation with flexibility and it takes time to build your flexible automations. I'm gonna say that again. It takes time for you to build in those automations something that works for you. I've, I've been through this and I just wanna share my experiences and what has worked and what has not worked. Look, I'm not perfect. I'm still in the middle of figuring all this out, but I hope I can at least get you thinking about how you can tweak your own meal plans and automations. Like I said before, food and nutrition is such a huge part of our day and it affects our bodies and brains and of course our kids' bodies and brains, and it's a huge part of living a healthy ADHD life. It's a journey. You're not going to figure it out today or right now, and that's okay, but being aware of this and taking on that journey to better food choices, totally worth it. Try setting up a few repeatable meals. Screenshot the ones that work, and then just give your brain a break. Get the kids involved. Ask them some of their favorite meals. Figure out how to make it more healthy. Put it in the rotation. If you know another ADHD mom who's struggling with just chaos in life, I would love for you to share this episode with them. We all need a little bit of support, right? And if you've figured out your own way to track your food without tracking it, or if you want more episodes like this, I would love to hear some feedback. You can find me Jessica at the a adhd mom.com. You are doing amazing. Listen, you're showing up. You're finding ways to thrive even in the chaos, and in my book, that's a win. All right? Go out and have a beautiful day.