A Food Journal – A Excellent Tool To Lose Weight
Advice from The First Lady of Fitness, Fashion, and Fun and Pittsburgh personal trainer, Independent Beachbody Coach, and life coach, Jackie Omotalade. More health and fitness tips are available at http://www.fixupmybody.com
When you’re trying to lose weight, one of the smartest and easiest steps you can take is to keep a food journal. A food journal is as its name suggests—a notebook in which you record your daily food intake. You can track of a number of things in your food journal or you can keep it simple, but in either case, this is a great way in which to help yourself stick to a weight loss plan.
The Kaiser Permanente’s Center for Health Research conducted a research study to examine the effects of keeping a food dairy with weight loss. They found that food journaling can double a person’s weight loss. Dr. Jack Hollis, lead author of the study, said they found that people lost more weight as they kept more food records.
There are a number of pieces of information you can record in your food diary. First, consider just listing your daily menu. This will help you actually see what you eat on any given day and notice patterns of unhealthy eating that you never considered before. Some like to also record calories, protein, fiber, fat, and other nutrients. Portion size may be recorded as well. If you truly want to use diary format, you can also list the reasons you’re eating other than hunger, the cravings you experience, and your feelings about your diet on any given day. Other things you could include are:
* Time: Time of day you ate this food or drank this beverage.
* Where: What location were you in when you ate.
* Alone or with whom: Were you by yourself or with others.
* Activity: List activities done while eating (watching TV, driving).
* Mood: How were you feeling before, during and after eating?
It’s your diary, so do what is right for you.
When you start a food journal, keep in mind that you can use whatever kind of recording and writing tools you like best. For some people, the traditional journal or just a plain notebook works fine. You can also keep a food journal on your computer. Simply open up a word processing program and keep the icon on your desktop. Others like to use Excel or other data entry programs, which help quiet a lot when it comes to adding totals at the end of the day. You can keep your food diary on a laptop or palm pilot, or slip a notebook into your bag during the day—whatever works best for your lifestyle.
Remember to update your food journal every day and review it at the end of each week in order to track your progress. You may wish to note in your diary when you hit certain weight loss goals or when you gain weight in order to look for causes. You can show your diary to professionals to make sure that you are staying healthy as well. Food diaries work great for many people, so you should consider starting one today in order to lose the most weight possible.
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