Food Diary Weight Loss Success

How does a food diary help me lose weight?

Keeping a food diary is an approach used by nutrition professionals and doctors when helping people to manage their health through their diet.

The reason that food diaries are so effective for weight loss, is that by recording everything you eat and drink, it helps focus you on how much you are eating and what types of foods. Relying on memory is not as reliable as you might think! Typically people underestimate what they've eaten in a day by roughly one third. It's very easy to forget the little snacks you eat on the go that don't constitute a 'meal', or the mayo on your salad - but all those calories can soon add up. For example, did you know that just a large latte and chocolate muffin from one particular coffee shop contains a staggering 900 calories? For a woman or a man, that represents a big percentage of the recommended daily calorie intake!

A food diary will help you control your portions, realise what you eat and understand why you eat. It will give you a basis from which to make changes. The information you record will show which foods are contributing the most calories and fat to your diet, so you can spot where you can make a few important changes that will have a big effect. For example, one of Dr Campbell's patient's drank 8 mugs of tea every day with milk and 2 teaspoons of sugar. At 50 calories per mug, this was adding up to 400 calories per day! Simply cutting out the sugar was enough to save 250 calories - a small but significant change. The food diary approach is about empowering you to take control of your own diet. By understanding more about what are eating, you can start to re-educate your eating habits to not only lose weight, but importantly to keep it off.

How does a food diary help me lose weight?

Studies have shown that even keeping track of what you eat for 1 day can help you make changes in your diet! Research also shows that people who successfully keep their weight off, continue to monitor what they eat and how active they are in some way. Once you've reached your goal weight, your food diary is always a useful tool to use from time to time, to keep your diet in check.