How To Keep Food Diary - Tips For Weight Loss Food Diary

Why keep a food diary: Keeping a food diary can be very effective in many ways. It can help you keep track of how much you are eating. It is especially useful for those who are trying to lose weight. You realize what quantities, or how many times, or which calorie rich food you are gorging on. The next step would be to cut down on these foods and thus ultimately lose weight.

Another important use for a food diary is that it can help you keep track of what you are eating.

You can find out if your eating habits are healthy. It helps you know whether you are eating a balanced diet of vegetables, fruits and cereals. It helps you ascertain if you are getting enough of all the nutrients like carbohydrates, proteins, vitamins, minerals and fats.

Writing Food Diary : Assess That You Are Eating Right

Writing a food diary is the first step to assessing that you are eating healthy and eating right. It helps not only in long term weight management but also helps to ensure that you are getting enough nutrition.

How to keep a food diary: It is not too difficult to keep a food diary. You need not be very exact, even a rough estimate will do. What you will have to ensure, however, is that you are absolutely honest, and include your daily snacks in your diary. Whether it is a cookie, or a wedge of apple, or a soda, or even a fistful of nuts or popcorn, you must note it down. Regularity and honesty is essential. Only then will you realize whether you are eating the right kinds of food, and whether your diet is really nutritious or not.

You can use a computer, or even an old-fashioned notebook. A small notebook is more convenient for the simple fact that you can carry it around with you, whether you go to work or to a picnic.

Depending upon the size of the notebook, you can divide it into columns or sections. The columns could be about each meal or the nutritional values or about calories – whatever works best for you.

Usually the best way would be to devote one page to each day. You can then further divide it into sections labeled ‘breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, drinks’. Or you could divide it into hourly sections.

Another way to organize the diary would be to have columns like ‘How much’, ‘What kind’, ‘Time’, ‘Where’, and so on.

At the end of the day, keep a space to review the day’s intake. By keeping track of the kind of food you have eaten, you will understand how much nutrition you have actually taken in during the course of the day.

Submitted on January 16, 2014