Thursday, February 12, 2009

The Importance Of A Weight Loss Food Diary

By Haiyan Lai-Heskin

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. Studies have shown that even keeping track of what you eat for one day can help you make changes in your diet.

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

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. There are a number of pieces of information you can record in your food diary.

You can record calories, protein, fibre, fat, and other nutrients which you take every day. Portion size may be recorded as well. However, just list 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 is good enough.

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

If computing is your seeing, you can use Excel or other data entry programs to keep your food diary, or open up a word processing program and keep the icon on your desktop, which help quiet a lot when it comes to adding totals at the end of the day.

Remember to update your food diary every day and review it at the end of each week in order to track your progress. Keeping a diary for a minimum of a week or two would be best, but just a few days is good, and if all you can manage is one day that would still be beneficial.

Monitor your weight loss progress persistently in order to maintain the goal you have achieved, or look for the causes when you have gained some weight.

Keeping a food diary can double a person's weight loss according to a study. It provides insight into the progress of your weight loss program and will indicate whether or not you meet your goals. - 15683

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