How to Keep a Food Diary, and Why
Many nutritional experts agree that keeping a food diary is critical to weight loss success. A food diary creates a conscious awareness of food intake and eating patterns.
After keeping a diary many people are often surprised at how that "occasional" big dessert turns out to be a regular occurrence.
While some factors such as age or genetics are outside of our control - we can make choices about what foods we eat.
Here are some basic guidelines for keeping a food diary.
Details you record could include:
- What you ate or drank: Be specific and include everything.
- How much: Size, volume, weight, and number of items.
- 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?
What is your purpose?
What you include in your food diary depends on which area concerns you the most.- If your problem is portions: focus on weighing and measuring everything you eat.
- If you want to focus on a nutritious diet: record the nutritional components (fat, sugar, salt, etc). (NOTE: There are some great on-line resources reviewed here).
- If your problem is habitual eating patterns: Focus on recording time of day, where, with whom, and activity.
- Emotional eating issues? Log your moods and their connections to eating patterns.
Six Very Good Reasons for Keeping a Diary
- Account for all those 'little extras'
Many people eat healthily at mealtimes, but snack poorly in between. If you're aiming to lose a pound a week, just a few extras (eg. a can of coke, a cookie and a packet of crisps) during the day prevents you from seeing results on the scales.
Writing down everything you eat demonstrates the cost of those 'occasional' nibbles...
- Know when you can afford to treat yourself
Conversely, keeping track of your food intake over the course of a day or a week gives you the freedom to enjoy a treat once in a while - guilt-free. If you know you've got calories to spare for the day, and no chocolate has passed your lips for six days, you can indulge yourself!
- Be aware of when you're eating
Keeping a food diary highlights patterns, showing if you overeat at particular times. Perhaps you binge late at night, because you've been eating too little all day? Or perhaps you graze constantly? If you don't keep a food diary because you have no hope of remembering everything you eat ... you may need to change your habits.
- Fight 'portion creep'
Those of us who've been dieting or maintaining for a long time often get used to "eyeballing" portions rather than weighing everything out. But if your weight loss has plateaued, or if those pounds are edging back on, keeping a diary means you need to weigh your foods. That "medium" portion of pasta or rice might be bigger than you think...
- See your habits changing
It can be motivational to look back on a food diary from a few months or even years ago and see how your nutritional choices have changed. Perhaps you've curbed your chocolate habit, or maybe you now eat proper meals instead of junk-food snacks. And if you're having a bad day, flicking back to a "perfect" week in your diary is encouraging: if you did it once, you can do it again!
- Boost your self-control
Knowing you have to write down everything you eat makes you think twice about that donut, or that second plateful at a buffet. Even if you're the only person who'll see your diary, recording your food intake is a very easy way to improve your self-control.
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40 Comments
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Created / Updated: November 14, 2011
Studies have been shown that the “awareness” itself could reduce body weight about 5%. "Keep the food diary" is the good way to keep alert what people eat.
ReplyHow to keep write a food items in daily base, it's a big challenge.
Could you give me a reference for the study you referred to?
ReplyThanks
Keeping a food diary is one the best things that I have ever done.
ReplyAugust 21, I started to write down everithing I ate. I've lost 1.5 kg* :) I bought a little note book and have it at hand in my purse.
(* I don't know how to convert it to your system)
ReplyInstead of doing a food diary when I was losing weight, I did a weight loss journal. It was on a sheet of paper and simple because that's what I had time for. Each day I got on the scale, I'd write down my weight, and then I'd include my body fat percentage because my scale offeres that information. Seeing the progress every day was enough motivation for me to continue eating healthy foods. I mentally kept track of what I ate which worked for me and I got results the results that I wanted. :)
ReplyI've been using My-Calorie-Counter.com religiously for two months now, and it;s totally changed my life, my views on food, portions, etc. What I was eating before was, simply put, a nightmare. And - unknown to me, really. You just don't think about what exactly it is that you're eating most of the time.
Now I do.
No affiliated with the site, BTW, just a happy member.
ReplyI have an unusual issue. I switched to an organic diet earlier this year. After calculating the amount of calories I need to support my level of working out, it turns out that I was undereating( sometimes as low as 800 cal) Some may say that I'm lucky to not have portion control issues, but I ate little enough to slow my metabolism and it will take as much as 3 months for my body to ajust.
ReplyA food journal is a good idea for anyone who is interested in supplying what the body needs.
It really worked for me,
135 lbs down
15 to go :)
ReplyWhat were some of the major things you did to lose 135 pounds because i really need to lose my weight!?
ReplyYou honestly do not need to write a food diary in order to loose weight. Isn't it time consuming anyways? If you want to be thin for life it's pretty obvious that you will have to abandon macaroni and cheese, cookies and other high fat items.
ReplyI kept a food diary BEFORE I started losing weight so I could see where I was getting most of my calories. I realized that I was eating sometimes 4500 calories a day or so just by making nutritionally poor choices. I've never really been an emotional eater, but I did eat a lot of junk before I decided to lose weight simply because it tasted good. When I realized that I was eating almost 600 calories just for a breakfast of poptarts and a 20 oz sweetened juice drink, I started making better choices and the pounds came off.
Now, I don't keep a journal every day, but if the pounds creep on, I analyze what I'm eating and cut out the things I don't need (like Quaker rice snacks and Skittles and too much beer). Works pretty well, but you do have to be brutally honest or it won't work for you.
ReplyI've been keeping a food diary for over 5 years now. It's just become a part of my daily routine, like brushing my teeth. It helps me plan ahead - I use Fitday and will often "pre-log" my food since I eat pretty much the same breakfast lunch and snacks, only dinner changes. It also allows me to figure out, based on what is planned for dinner, what I have left for my own discretion throughout the day. My food log serves as an important anchor for me. In the beginning it was a paper journal on the counter and when I saw it, it provided a reminder. Now, I log online, but in my mind whenever I eat a food, I see my log and what it will add to the total. It also allows me to look back at times when I was successful in weight loss and review what I was eating or to see averages over a period of time. Things you just can't get by tracking in your head.
ReplyMy husband and I were looking for a free site. Thanks for mentioning Fitday. I checked it out based on your post and it was exactly what we wanted.
ReplyI've heard of this tip before but was never sold on it till I tried it myself. I believe it's been key to the success of my most recent diet - which followed many bouts of failures.
My first realization was food that comes in a bag was a big no-no. Try listing the number of chips you eat on paper and you start to realize that it's easy to inhale 1,000 cals in front of the TV from those innocuous looking little chips. Who even would think of how many chips they eat unless they have to record it later? I don't even eat popcorn at the movies anymore all due to food journal. Talk about mindless munching.
Some of my friends say recording what you eat seems neurotic, but I say the way some of us tend to eat is neurotic. Food journals keep eating in check.
ReplyI'm the opposite. I'm trying to stop over-analyzing and feeling guilty over what I eat. I think a food journal is great for building awareness, but if you're already hyper-aware, anxious and guilty over everything you eat, it's kind of counter-productive.
But I guess I'm kind of rare (I mean, how many people are making a conscious effort to *cut down* on fiber and vegetables... and having trouble). I just want to point out that there are people out there who are aware of what they are eating and should not be making themselves even more conscious of it...
Even my nutritionist thinks a food diary is a terrible idea, which at least is somewhat reassuring in my goal to be less anal-retentive and guilt-ridden.
ReplyI just logged my food intake on thedailyplate.com. I was interested to note that although I've eaten entirely different things in the past 3 days, the calorie count before exercise was 1773, 1789, 1770 for those days, in other words, I apparently am gravitating toward that exact level of food consumption and fullness. I want to lose some weight so I want to lower that, but seeing it in black and white really clarifies what I'm doing.
Reply