How Keeping A Food Diary Helps You Lose Weight

There’s one very simple technique that’s been shown to double your weight loss. It doesn’t involve buying expensive (and potentially dangerous) pills, it doesn’t require a hundred stomach crunches before breakfast, and anyone can do it.

All you have to do is keep a food diary.

In 2008, a study found that people who kept a food diary on at least five days per week lost twice as much weight as those who didn’t. (See for more details about the findings.)

So how can writing down what you eat help you to lose weight?

You’ll Have A Massive Will Power Boost

As a dieter (and now a maintainer) myself, I know how easy it is to sneak in a cookie here or a few chips there. Many of us have a habit of nibbling – having a few candies or a sliver of cheese or a couple of chocolates – throughout the day.

But when you keep a food diary, and write down everything you eat, you’ll find that it’s suddenly much easier to resist temptation. Knowing that you have to record that cookie or that “teeny” slice of cake will definitely help you to think twice about it.

You Can See Where You’re Going Wrong

Can you remember everything you’ve eaten over the past week? No, me neither. You might have a vague feeling that certain bad habits are holding you back from the weight-loss success that you’re seeking … but you’ve not quite identified what those habits are.

Keeping a food diary means you can look back on a week’s worth of eating and spot where things might be going wrong. Perhaps you always end up having a donut when you get coffee with a friend, or maybe you eat healthily all day in the office but end up snacking when you’re at home.

How To Keep Your Food Diary

So, ready to double your weight loss? Here’s what you need to do to keep an effective food diary:

Step 1: Find A Recording System That Works For You

If you spend most of your day at a computer, like I do, you might want to use a simple Excel spreadsheet to keep track of what you eat. You can also use online programs (I personally use Weight Loss Resources, but it’s quite UK-centric).

If you’re out and about during the day, a simple notebook might work best.

Step 2: Record Amounts And Calories

When I first tried keeping food diaries, I just wrote down what I ate. This is useful, but you’ll achieve greater success if you also track the calories in your food (which also necessitates recording the weight or size of your portion). Just knowing that you ate “fries” doesn’t help you much, “Jumbo fries” or “Small fries” or “Five fries from kids’ portion” does.

Knowing how many calories you’ve eaten over the course of a day can also prevent you from inadvertently eating too little.

Step 3: Consider Recording Other Details

Many dieters find that it’s useful to write down some extra details in their food diary. If you have problems with binging, emotional eating or over-indulging under specific circumstances, try recording:

• The time you ate each meal/snack
• How hungry you were at the time (on a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 is “ravenous” and 10 is “totally stuffed”).
• Where you were, and who you were with
• How you were feeling

Step 4: Fill It In!

This is the crucial step – you need to actually fill in your diary on a regular basis. I’d recommend that you try to record what you ate as soon as possible after consuming it. At the end of each day, make sure your diary is fully up-to-date. It’s hard to accurately remember more than a day’s worth of food.

Step 5: Analyse

You’ll boost your weight-loss if you just write everything in your diary then forget about it. But you’ll see even greater benefits if you take some time to go over what you’ve recorded, to see where you can make healthy improvements. You might want to think about:

• Are you getting enough fruit and vegetable portions? (You should average at least five per day.)
• Do you tend to snack unhealthily at certain times of day?
• Do you eat more at weekends than on weekdays?
• Are there any surprises (such as certain items taking up a lot of calories?)

Good luck with your food diary! If you need a template to get you started, there’s a great list of food diary templates here.

Written by Ali Hale

Related posts:

1. How to Make a Food Diary into a Habit
2. Keeping Dieting Simple
3. Lose Weight By Logging