How to Keep a Food Diary (And Why You Want To)

If you’re struggling to lose weight, have you tried keeping a food diary?

A food diary is considered one of the most effective weight loss tools that there is, potentially doubling your rate of weight loss.

Your food diary makes you aware of what your habits are. Many people aren’t even aware that they’re eating - you can probably think of times when you have eaten “just a few” chips from a friend’s bag. Little snacks can easily add up to the equivalent of an extra meal a day, without you realizing.

You can’t solve a problem if you don’tknow what it is. People often think they’re working hard to lose weight or to get healthy – but nothing’s changing. This is because they don’t know what they need to change. A food diary can help.

How to Keep a Food Diary

• Decide what your goal is. Are you aiming to lose weight, to eat healthier or something else?
• Record your portion sizes - how much you are eating at each meal?
• Record the time of day you ate - you may find that you end up eating at a specific time (or in a specific place) even when you’re not hungry.
• Try writing down what you’re going to eat in advance of eating it: this can help you make good decisions.
• It’s often helpful to record the calories or the grams of fat inwhat you’re eating, because this makes you aware.
• Write down the drinks you consume - It’s easy to forget the sugar and/or fat content of these. A 64-ounce super-sized drink can contain 64 grams of sugar.
• Aim to fill in your diary every time you eat - otherwise you forget. Take a small notebook if you’re out and copy snacks, drinks and meals into your diary later.
• Make sure you record everything - including free samples, or just one candy. It all adds up.

If you want to get going, you can download my free food diary template by clicking here.

For lots of tips on how to eat healthy without depriving yourself, buy my new book, How to Eat Healthy for Life. It costs just $9.99 in ebook format – and you can find out all about it here.

Category: Books