I read an interesting article today that said that keeping a food journal can increase your weight loss by up to 50%. I found this very interesting because I kept a food journal for a few months and found that it did not help me to loose weight. I have been thinking about starting back up with the food journal with the twist of writing down what I eat before I eat it. The premise for this is, if you are about to overeat and you actually take the time to write down how many cookies you are about to put in your mouth you might think twice about it.
Do you have any experience with a food journal? If so what effect would you say it has had on your weight loss? Do you have any tips for making the journal work instead of having it just create more work?
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July 10, 2008 at 2:01 pm
crazygina
I just read something like this too … i don’t know if it really helps… I haven’t ever done it – so I don’t know, but I would feel equally guilty having to write down the two cookies as I would eating them…
July 11, 2008 at 2:57 am
Simpleweight
Here are my tips:
1) use an online tool to make it simple for you to journal your food. (shameless plug, I recommend Simple Weight )
Using and online tool takes some of the hassle out of calorie counting and nutrient searching.
2) First, Build the habit of journaling. I definitely agree with you. Have a piece of paper and pen, and write down before you eat, what you are going to eat. If you can, enter it into an online system to get a feel the quantity of calories.
3) After you build the habit, start to move into more advanced habits. For example, I like to use a scale to measure my food. I realized that my two tablespoons of peanut butter on my PB&J is actually more like four tablespoons. So, by being more precise with my journal, I was able to learn that I’m actually eating more than I thought which of course was the cause of my stagnant weight loss.
4) Try to write emotions or thoughts down when you eat. It will help you assess your emotional eating habits.
5) After you have a month or two of historical data, start to look at reports. Identify if you have been losing or gaining weight. See if you can correlate your trends with your eating habits. Then, start to make conscious small changes regarding your eating habits. For example, if you normally have 1 glass of OJ every day, maybe you cut it to 1/2 a glass of OJ every day. If you normally eat out for lunch 2 or 3 times a week, maybe you create a rule for yourself that says no fries.
6) Again after you have the first habits started: Concentrate on Calories. it doesn’t matter if you want to follow the atkins diet, the low-fat diet, the meditteranean diet, the PBJ diet, whatever. Calories is the first thing one should start to worry about.
7) After you have been concentrating on calories and feel you have a good handle on it, then start to watch and manipulate your macronutrient combinations. In other words, your Fat to Protein to Carb Ratio. Every person is different, you need to experiment with your diet to find your best weight loss ratio of Fat to Protein to Carbs.
Finally, There have been numerous studies that state:
Weigh yourself every day, Track what you eat, Get some Exercise, and Make your weight management goals public and social. By following these trends, you’ll see results.
I encourage you to try out simpleweight or some other weight loss application to help make your food journal easier.