What is advantage of keeping diary private?

There are as many reasons to lock a food diary as there are people with closed diaries.

Mine is open now, but it was closed for a while in my journey when I reached a point where keeping it open stressed me out to the point that I would break into tears at parties where there was delicious food. It was unhealthy and I had to do something to break the cycle. I wasn't willing at the time to give the diet up (it was a healthy diet, just an unhealthy mentality about logging) but I did close my diary and relax my logging for a little while until my relationship with food was better. It was a decision that I came to in consultation with my therapist and really no one else should get a say in whether or not my diary is open.

Mine is just for me. It's a mess, but it makes sense to me. Since I calorie cycle naturally, I don't want people seeing that some days yes I do only eat 800 calories (gasp!) and judging me for that. Or seeing that the next day I had 2300 and asking me if I enjoyed that triple serving of ice cream. I eat when I'm hungry, bank my calories if I'm not, and it all comes out in the wash at the end of the week. If I stall out I might try a "conventional" diet and open my diary for suggestions then, but other than that it's my business and mine alone. Good for you for thinking about others though and keeping yours open! Some people need to see that from others and it helps them.

I set mine private because I don't want people picking apart every little thing I do. I hate being judged constantly. And while I am eating much healthier, it will never perfectly fit someone else's view of what I should eat so I find that I can be completely honest with myself when I have my diary private and I don't have to worry about public scrutiny constantly. MFP can be brutal sometimes.

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Because there are some creepy-weird people on MFP who like looking at what strangers eat and then make creepy-weird and nasty comments. I also don't want people saying, "OMG 950 calories! It's not enough!" or "OMG! 1450 calories! That's too much!"

I honestly don't need the approval of others. My lunch is my lunch, lol. It's not a big deal and I don't care who likes it or who doesn't, so what the point of inviting people in might be - I don't know.

Also because I track personal stuff like meds. But mostly, the creepy-weirdos.

Had one smug individual come up a few years ago, when I first got started and was still trying to learn how all this really works. His exact quote will stay with me forever. "Well, no wonder your (sic) not losing at a decent pace. I hope that ice cream was worth it!" I even remember the grammatical error. LOL I deleted him and refused to add friends for like two years, it got my goat so bad.

I found I felt inhibited with my diary open. No one was judging me, I just feel more comfortable with it closed. If I have a question i will open it.

I keep my diary open but only to my friends.

.....cause sometimes it's just not anyone else's business, but their own as to what they are logging in their diary.

Also, I eat a lot of wild meat on the years I have an animal to eat and have gotten a lot of flack about that.

I keep mine private as to not be a bad influence on people in my friend list.

levitateme wrote: »

Kalikel wrote: »

Because there are some creepy-weird people on MFP who like looking at what strangers eat and then make creepy-weird and nasty comments. I also don't want people saying, "OMG 950 calories! It's not enough!" or "OMG! 1450 calories! That's too much!"

I used to keep my diary closed because of this. In the past I have had several users make comments to me about my food choices for literally no reason. I was in a thread giving advice to someone else and my diary was looked at and scrutinized by randos. "Your advice is invalid because you ate 2 mini magnums yesterday and went over your carbs." lmao okay

My diary is wide open now and has been for a long time. Who cares what anyone thinks or says as long as I keep doing what I aim to do.

This also happened to me. It's simply not worth it keeping my diary public when there are children (we're supposed to be adults, but some people act like kids) who determine the value of a person within the MFP community based on her food diary.

I don't want my wife to know how many calories are in the Windsor Candian I'm consuming each night without her knowledge.

When I first began on here and logging was new to me, I kept it closed because I was worried I might be tempted to be dishonest on the off-chance that anyone other than me might be paying attention to my diary.
I opened my diary for a while after I got the hang of logging and felt confident about what I was doing. However, and this is kind of dumb but it is the reason I closed it again, I tend to eat the same things until I go grocery shopping and then suddenly my diary has all sorts of new foods logged, and it was driving me nuts that the possibility existed that people could put 2+2 together and know that I went grocery shopping on a specific day. I realize no one gives a crap that I went grocery shopping, and no one was probably paying any attention whatever to my diary to notice such a thing to begin with... but the mere possibility bugged me to no end and gave me anxiety that I frankly have no good reason to put up with.