I could write things down- is it sort of like a personal watch dog? You have to be honest with yourself, so you know that if you eat that Reece Cup you have to write it down (with shame dripping from the tip of the ball point pen)? And to make yourself aware of what you're eating so you don't just absentmindedly eat the chips... you consciously choose not to?
The purpose is to gain knowledge so I don't accidentally sabotage myself. If I am really trying to limit what I eat, at least during the weight loss phase, what sabotages me is not what someone else brings into the house (or in my case the restaurant I am forced to eat at 5 days a week), but an internal drive that says I need to eat something else. It's hard to describe, since it isn't really hunger.
Once I discovered a pattern, it was a lot easier for me to avoid eating things which trigger a need to eat more than I intend to eat. Sort of like being easier to turn down the first drink than the 3rd or 4th. It isn't really the first drink that is the problem - the 3rd or 4th might be. For me, the effect of sugar (and to a lesser extent fat) alters my judgment regarding my response to subsequent available food. If I know the likely impact, I can make an easier choice not to eat the first high sugar/high fat content food, rather than make a harder choice once I have the pump primed, so to speak, not to eat the 3rd or 4th thing. I can also choose days to indulge and plan for them, knowing in advance that the next day will be harder - rather than being surprised by it when it happens and struggling for days to get back on track.
So - no - it isn't a guilt trip, or making you aware of how much you are really consuming kind of thing. I am aware that there are recommendations made to keep a food diary based on the assumption that people who are not successful at losing weight are really fibbing to themselves about what they are eating, and that writing it down eliminates the easy fib. Personally, I know what I'm eating, and I find writing down when I've been "bad" isn't any more helpful to me than having someone else tell me I shouldn't be eating that Reece's cup. (If I feel like having a Reece's cup, I will have one - and stop telling me what is good for me!)
I had been slowly gaining back the 65 lbs I lost in 1997 and kept off for 5 years. I had been blaming it on the restaurant I have to eat at for lunch every day. That restaurant certainly plays a large part. I had no trouble keeping the weight off for three years before I switched jobs, and struggled to keep it off for two years at the new job (with the lunch requirement), and then got sick and tired of having only (at that time) two food choices for lunch and gave up. Giving up at lunch meant eating extremely fatty foods at lunch. Then, because that food triggered a drive to eat more, it was harder for me to control what I ate the rest of the day, and harder to make the "right" choice the next day.
Unfortunately, as long as I work at this job I will have to live with that restaurant and its external invitation to make bad choices every day. If I don't figure out how to make peace with it I will continue to be unhealthy (diabetes is a major threat, given my family history and blood glucose readings in the pre-diabetic range). Willpower alone obviously hasn't been successful; over the past 5 years I gained back 50 of the 65 lbs I lost. What is currently working is ensuring that my pump is not primed by sugar/fat - avoiding triggering a drive to eat more makes it easier to stick to my decision to limit myself to one of the (now) three choices which meet my dietary needs.
The food diary I was suggesting is just a tool to help figure out if there are foods you eat which make it harder to say "no" to later external temptations (which will, unfortunately, always be there). It's just a way of discovering, "When I eat XXX, I later have a harder time than usual eating only what I intend to eat." If I know that, I can choose not to eat XXX - or I can deliberately choose to eat XXX, knowing in advance that I will have to work harder later to eat only what I intend to eat.
