Why Keep A Food Diary?
Many people keep a daily diary and each has his or her own
reasons for doing so.
As children we're often encouraged to write down things that
have happened during our day and to put pen to paper to record our hopes and
dreams and our progress towards them.
As we grow and get a job a diary is often a basic
requirement, a way of keeping track of appointments, of things we must do and
so on.
In fact we're told by those who should know that writing
down our goals is the first step to achieving them so it seems to follow that
we should be keeping track of our progress when we're losing weight and a food
diary or calorie counter is perhaps the best way of doing that.
When you're already keeping a diary for other areas of your
life then a food diary is an easy addition to what you're already doing but if,
like me, you're not a "diary writer" then it isn't as easy as it
sounds.
After all who in their right mind would bother to write down
everything they put into their stomach; everything, every day, every minute of
every day?
It isn't easy is it?
But just think for a minute, we spend so little time eating
that keeping a food diary recording what we eat should really take no time at all.
The key here is motivation.
If we have a genuine desire to lose some weight, if we are determined
to do so then keeping a food diary and counting the calories of everything we eat and drink shouldn't be a daunting
task.
It takes so little time to write down what you had for
breakfast, really, how long does it take to write: "2 eggs, 2 rashers of
bacon, 1 slice of toast with butter, 2 cups of coffee with sugar".
No time at all.
Same for lunch and dinner, such very little time is involved
in keeping a food diary that we all should be able to do it without any trouble
at all.
If we have the motivation to do so.
So how do get that motivation?
Well perhaps one way could be to have a "fat"
picture pasted onto the front cover of our food diary and keep it where it will
be seen when we sit down to eat.
If we don't want others to see it put it on the inside of
the front cover.
Another way may be to record our weight at the start of each
day as the first entry in our food diary for the day, that way we will have a
running report on how well our weight loss programme is going.
The next thing to determine is what information should we
record in our food diary.
The easiest way to do this, at least in the beginning, is to
list not only the foods we eat but also the calories and portion sizes.
I don't mean here that we should weight everything as we eat
it, that of course isn't practical, but we can give a rough estimate of how
much we're eating even if it's only "a large, medium, small" portion.
As we get used to keeping our food diary we might go on to
categorise the types of food, is it a vegetable, fruit, red meat, fish and so
on.
This information when considered with our recorded weight at
the beginning of each day will give us some very good indications as to what is
helping us to lose weight and what is hindering us.
It will also be very useful as a tool to help us when we're
planning our meals.
Now, we all like to indulge ourselves every so often and
there's no need to feel guilty when we do, it helps to keep us on track and
prevents us from feeling deprived when we occasionally eat something which we
love but which doesn't contribute to our weight loss, the key here is to do so
in moderation.
A few bites of that chocolate cake won't derail our efforts,
eating the whole cake might do so, but we must make sure we write that down as
well, not doing so will be counter productive and may lead to feelings of
guilt.
Another useful "trick" is to reward ourselves when
we find that things have gone particularly well, even if it's only a gold star
stuck on the page that proves to us that we're doing the right things, it's
amazing what extra motivation it will provide as we look back through our food
diary to check on our progress.
There is no doubt that for many of us counting calories and the food diary habit
is a challenging one to adopt but once we've made it a daily part of our lives
we will find it to be a very worthwhile investment in our weight loss
programme.
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