Tip Of The Week: Keep A Journal

 

Keeping a meticulous food diary or journal is useful for individuals wondering about potential food-related ailments or how much they eat in a day. It’s time-consuming and potentially cumbersome, but fitness and diet experts say many people can benefit from the effort.

There are many reasons why people keep food journal but the most common is for weight loss. When it comes to losing weight, experts say there is plenty of proof that keeping track of daily food and calorie intake is one of the most effective means to change behaviour.

Diet experts say the secret to successful food journaling is consistency and accuracy. Food diaries can be very helpful in weight control for individuals who are willing to do them carefully.

  Why Keep a Food Journal

Losing weight isn’t an easy task. If it was we’d all have a body like Teyana Taylor, Beyonce or Channing Tatum!

One of the most difficult aspects of weight loss is changing our eating habits and controlling how much we eat. We all know we need to eat healthy food to lose weight but some of us just don’t know where to start or how much that should be eaten.

One of the best ways to control how much you’re eating is to keep a food journal. It’s very easy to forget about a few mouthfuls of this or a bar of that but tracking exactly what you eat, you can identify where you may be overeating or having problems.

Here’s a list of reasons why keeping a food journal is essential to weight loss journey;

1.      Having a food journal helps keep you on track, watch your portion and food calorie intake.

2.      Mobile phone apps like My Fitness Pal, make tracking food even easier, especially as you can just scan the barcodes and not spend ages entering information. See Top food journal apps

3.      You can easily set a calorie target to work towards.

4.      It makes you more conscious of the food you eat thus, you’re less likely to overeat and mess up your weight loss efforts.

5.      You are less likely to eat out of habit or daily calorie allowance if you have an idea of how much more food you can eat each day.  Eating in front of the TV is a common habit that can cause someone to overeat but if you're already aware of how many calories you have available to eat, you will be less likely to indulge or binge.

6.      Knowing how many calories you can consume helps you plan and prep meals in advance.

7.      Help Identify calorie surplus or deficit: Not only does a food journal shows the total calories you are eating, but you can also know how many more, or less calories you are eating relative to your calorie burned. If you eat more calories than you burn, you gain weight, and if you eat less, you lose weight.

8.      You quickly learn calorie-dense foods, that is, foods that are taking up your calorie allowance and this can help you make better choices to make your calories go further.

9.      Identify situations where you binge.

10.  If you have a personal trainer it can help him/her identify reasons you may be struggling to achieve your weight loss goals. It also give your personal trainer insight on how and where to advise you on things you can do to improve your diet.

11.  You can even know the macro-nutrient amounts you are consuming daily (carbohydrates, fats and proteins) if you have specific goals like gaining muscle.

12.  it’s very motivating and makes you feel in control.  It can become a fun challenge to stay within your goal everyday once you start seeing results. 

13.  Some food journal websites have communities where people share tips, recipes and even motivate each other which can help you on your journey.

A lot of our habits are subconscious, so by making yourself conscious of how and what you eat by keeping a food journal, it makes changing your eating habits a whole lot easier. When you keep tracking for long, develop good habits and routines it becomes second nature, however for those first few stages of weight loss your food journal will be an invaluable tool that can assure success in reaching your goals. 

Now put this tip into practice and start getting “waisted”. Let me know your progress plus you can send in your before and after picture.