Using GL to sort the good, the bad and the suicidal 140 List the foods you eat so that later you can check their GLs against the table. Once you have completed the EAD, sit down and go through it with a highlighter pen. Highlight everything that is either high in fat or has a GL over 10 that was eaten for afternoon tea or later. Note everything with high fat or a GL of more than 20 that was eaten at lunch. Don’ t worry too much about what you eat for morning tea or breakfast. As you know, this is the time to be eating your high sacrifice foods that will often have spectacularly disgusting GLs. If you are someone who gets fat on eating too much high fat or rich carbohydrate foods before lunch, you will need more help than this book can give you. Contact a well qualified therapist. Analyzing your EAD will give you a clear idea of what you need to do differently – provided you did not lie to yourself. How weird would that be – to lie to yourself, to try to look good to yourself – when nobody else is watching! That might sound silly but, can I tell you, we do it all the time. In fact, research shows that overweight people under-report what they are eating by as much as 39 %. 23 Not so surprisingly, what people mostly under-report are fat and carbohydrate rich snack foods. I know, because I did it too. Use your EAD to discover what’ s happening. If you are gaining weight, or not losing it quickly enough, the answer will be there. This is the most important investigation I can do in this situation. The sooner we write down what we eat the less chance we have of lying to ourselves. The main way we lie to ourselves is simply by‘ forgetting’. Many of my clients continue their EADs for a few weeks until they really clearly understand where the extra calories are coming from. We 23 Weber JL, Reid PM, Greaves KA, et al. Validity of self-reported energy intake in lean and obese young women, using two nutrient databases, compared with total energy expenditure assessed by doubly labeled water. Eur J Clin Nutr 2001; 55: 940-950.