Monday, February 16, 2009

Food Diary Leads To Long-Term Weight Loss Success

By Haiyan Lai-Heskin

When you track your nutrition, you are more likely to reach your diet and health goals, research proves. So starting a food diary is possibly the most important step you can take toward developing a lifestyle that leads to long-term weight loss success.

A notebook can be made into a very good food diary that can record the foods and drinks you consume during the day.

There are a number of pieces of information you can record in your food diary. You can either track a number of things in your food diary or you can keep it simple, but this is a great way in which to help yourself stick to a weight loss plan.

Listing your daily menu to help you actually record what you eat on any given day and correct the patterns of unhealthy eating that you never considered before. You may also record calories, protein, fibre, fat, and other nutrients. Portion size may be recorded as well.

Use it as a normal diary format. For some people, the traditional journal or just a plain notebook works fine. But you don't have to keep a traditional journal , you can use whatever kind of recording and writing tools you like best. Writing down the reasons you're eating other than hunger, the cravings you experience, and your feelings about your diet during the day.

Other than notebook, keeping a food diary on your computer is also a great idea. Use Excel or other data entry programs, or simply open up a word processing program and keep the icon on your desktop, it will help a lot when it comes to adding totals at the end of the day.

Update your food diary frequently, check it every day and review it at the end of each week in order to track your progress. A minimum of a week or two would be best for keeping your weight loss food diary. But just a few days is good, and if all you can manage is one day that would still be beneficial.

A detailed account of what you eat and drink and the calories is a powerful tool in helping you lose weight. Monitor it persistently in order to maintain the goal you have achieved.

Keeping a weight loss food diary provides insight into the progress of your weight loss program and will indicate whether or not you meet your goals. Change your life in very big and very small ways by writing a weight loss food diary. - 16004

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