 Lifestyle
Weight-loss Strategies
Dear Food Diary,
Today I ate ½ grapefruit for breakfast, three Hershey Kisses
before lunch, two slices of turkey on 2 slices of rye with a 1 3/8
ounce bag of chips, and 1 cup of pasta with 2 tablespoons of sauce
and a glass of 1% milk for dinner.
The food journal has been shown to be an effective tool for maintaining
a healthy diet. “Journaling is one of the most important things
a person can do,” says Elizabeth Somer, MA, RD, author of
10 Habits That Mess Up a Woman’s Diet.
“Just for a few days, it doesn’t have to be forever,
but write down everything that goes in your mouth because it’s
pretty hard to change if you don’t know what you are doing
wrong.”
Why is a food log so important? Because, says Somers, Research
indicates that people underestimate their calorie intake by almost
800 calories per day. A written log makes that impossible. As Somer
notes, you might find yourself doing a lot more mindless eating
than you imagine—like popping a few Hershey Kisses in your
mouth every time you stop at a coworker’s desk. Journaling
helps you recognize those problematic patterns and others, like
reaching for donuts from the lounge after you've overslept and missed
your chance to make breakfast. “Those little things make all
the difference. People think they know what they are eating. They
don’t,” says Somer.
But time is of the essence. “If you don’t write the
what you eat right when you are eating it, you will forget,”
she says. "If you wait until the end of the day to write down
what you eat, I guarantee you will not remember it accurately.”
Digital diet tracking options like SparkPeople.com or your Palm
Pilot are fine too. “It doesn’t have to be a book, it
can be a piece of paper and a golf pencil that you keep in your
back pocket.”
The efficiency of the food journal is that is concrete. This tangible
account of your own bad habits can become a psychological deterrent
that results in positive change.
Sometimes what you aren’t eating is just as important to
the record as what you are consuming. “If you usually have
a Snicker’s bar at 10 a.m. but you are not having it today
because you don’t want to have to write it down, w use two
different colored pens and write what you did have in one color
and put down in the other color what you would have eaten but didn’t
because you are record keeping. The more accurate your records are,
the better the feedback.”
In the case of food journaling, more is better. The more you include,
the better the record, which heightens your personal awareness.
That goes for exercise too. “People also tend to way overestimate
how much exercise they are getting. Keeping records of that as works,
too, if you're honest,” Somer says. “If you aren’t
breaking a sweat it doesn’t count. You have to be brutally
honest with yourself.”
Another key to effective food journaling is recognizing and recording
real portion sizes. A coffee shop muffin can be upwards of four
portions as opposed to the one serving that you might record in
your journal if you're not paying attention to size.
Once you've reached your weight goal or have satisfactorily changed
your behaviors and so have given up the journal, Somer suggests
that you check back once and a while. If you notice you're beginning
to gaining weight back or failing to exercise regularly, remember
the rewards of the journal.
~ Meghan A.T.B. Reese
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