You probably heard about food diaries as a necessary tool for weight loss. It simply means writing down everything you eat during the day. The idea may seem unnecessary at first, but there is more to it than what you ate.
Food diaries allow comparison. They help you analyze your eating habits and allow you to compare how you eat with healthy standards. They also help you associate your daily life circumstances with what you eat (for example, they help you compare your food during weekdays and weekends). More importantly, they allow you to see what extra empty calories you are ingesting and this enables you to omit certain items to reach your healthy weight.
Today, many applications for phones and tablets can count your calories and assess your required daily intake based on gender, age, current weight and height and weight loss goal. They are equipped with references to the amount of calories of the most common foods and even popular brands and allow you to log the amount of calories you eat anytime anywhere. You can enter the food you ate in any unit you want (cups, tablespoons, grams... etc.) for a more accurate calorie count. If you fail to find what you ate, break it down to its components. You can add any calories eaten or burned as well, based on other references if your food or exercise is not found in the program you use. It may be boring and frustrating at first, but you will get used to it and will be more motivated once you begin to gain the fruits of this whole process.
Food diaries are not just for dieting. If you decide to take a break from your diet and have all the cake you want for your birthday, you can still use them. In this case, you will be able to count how much weight gain-if any- you should expect based on what you eat. Once you get into the habit of logging what you eat, you will start counting calories again even if you do splurge for a few days. This way you can control your eating habits and protect yourself from yoyo dieting, simply because when you log your food, you are more likely to get back to healthy eating faster, rather than losing all your dieting efforts and gain weight before you decide to stop and start again. Also, you will learn to make wise substitutions because this activity will increase your awareness about the calories in your snacks and desserts.
These programs take into account your exercise. Many food logging programs include information about the calories burned by different exercises, down to the daily walking and working. This way, you get an accurate idea about what you eat versus what you burn. This helps you evaluate your activity level and find out how much more exercise you need to balance your calorie intake. Another advantage is considering the fat, protein and carbohydrate content of your food. If you have a health condition that calls for limiting fat, such as a cardiac disease, you can see how much fat you are getting even on your no-diet days. While all the numbers in those programs - including calories - are approximate, they can still give you a rough estimate of your day, which gives you a push to balance things out.
Log on to a food logging website now or download an application on your phone. If the idea still does not appeal to you, give it a week's trial and see where it takes you. It may end up changing your food and your life.
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