Write It Down!!!

During the last thirty years or so I have occasionally found the motivation to lose weight.  With few exceptions my inclination was not to diet but rather to eat healthier.  During one of those periods I met with a nutritionist.  She asked me to keep a food journal that recorded everything I ate/drank for a couple of weeks.  I remember thinking to myself, “Why waste my time?  I am eating and drinking a lot of stuff that I shouldn’t be.  That is why I need a nutritionist.”  Unfortunately for me, I didn’t take her advice and I never returned for a second visit.   In retrospect, that was a mistake.  One of the biggest and longest weight loss maintenance studies ever conducted was done at the Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research.  The study found that people who kept daily food journals lost twice as much weight as people who did not keep journals.   WebMD not only summarizes the results of this study, but it also discusses why food journals work so well and it provides tips for effective journaling.

There are many ways to keep a journal.  Pen and paper can work.  But more technologically savvy people may want to take advantage of one of the many excellent free apps that can be accessed from your computer and/or smart phone.  I use Myfitnesspal.com.  This particular app offers several nice features.  For example it: (1) will use your age, weight and sex to calculate how many calories a day you can consume to meet your weekly weight loss goal; (2) allows you to journal your daily food consumption through menu driven check boxes; (3) provides an exhaustive list of foods (including thousands of fast food restaurant menu items- extremely handy when eating out) and nutritional information for each food that you eat;  (4) allows you to use a smart phone to scan the bar code of a food if you can’t find the food in the site’s data base; (5) allows you to add your own personal recipes and it calculates the calories/nutritional values per serving;  (6) charts your weight loss, nutritional profiles, and exercise, and it automatically recalculates your calorie/nutritional goals as you lose weight; (7) provides a space for you to write notes on a particular day’s eating/exercise entry.

An honest, complete food journal will help identify eating habits – good and bad.  If you use an app, it will quickly educate you about the calorie and nutritional content of everything you eat/drink.  For most people, eating is such a habit that it often becomes a mindless activity.  Unless we purposefully pay close attention it is easy to lose track of what, or how much, we eat.  People often forget about certain things that they eat or drink – alcohol and chewing gum for example; or they don’t realize that vitamins and other nutritional supplements can be a significant source of calories. 

Whether it is eating with friends, passing along a family recipe, a holiday celebration or pure pleasure, food plays an important role in most people’s lives.  But too often we actually forget that food is fuel. What we eat, how often we eat, how much we eat and the quality of what we eat directly impacts how we feel and function. 

My food journal was critical to my initial weight loss success because it made me a more educated and thoughtful eater.  It provided me with the information I needed to make better dietary decisions, monitor progress (both nutrition and exercise) and develop weight loss/exercise goals.  Food journaling also held me accountable for my behavior.  Finally there is just something about seeing my success in writing that kept me motivated to meet my goals.

Write it down!  Consider keeping a food journal for a couple of weeks.  There is a good chance that you will learn a lot about food and about yourself.  And you might just discover a very effective weight loss (and weight management) tool.