A food and exercise log is a simple tool that can have a major effect on weight loss. In fact, keeping a food log may help you lose up to 50 percent more weight than you would if you didn't record your daily diet, according to registerd dietitian Kristin Kirkpatrick, writing on the Huffington Post. Journaling your meals and exercise can do more than just track your calorie intake and output; it can help you discover hidden eating triggers, undo bad habits and learn how to energize your body by eating and staying active.
Benefits
Most people use a food and exercise log to help them lose weight; a food journal is particularly effective for this goal because it raises your awareness of exactly what you're eating. Many dieters significantly underestimate the number of calories they take in, making it harder to lose weight. Keeping track of everything you eat not only gives you an exact figure for your calorie intake, it shows you how quickly calories can add up when you're choosing the wrong foods; just knowing that one measly candy bar will cost you 300 calories might make you think twice before biting into it. Tracking your food and exercise also teaches you how different foods and activities affect your mood and energy levels, as well as how they affect each other; if you notice that workouts feel easier when they're preceded by a carbohydrate-rich snack, you can repeat the habit to power through exercise every day.
Getting Started
Choose a notebook or journal that's easy to take with you everywhere you go; you should record your foods and activities immediately rather than trying to remember everything at the end of the day. Each food entry should include the food, portion size, calorie content, time of day, your level of hunger before and after eating, and your mood or emotions before and after eating; if you don't know the calorie content of a food, look it up using a calorie counting book or website. An exercise entry should note the exercise performed, time of day, length of time you exercised, perceived level of difficulty and how you felt before and after the workout.
Making The Most Of Your Logs
After several weeks of tracking your food and exercise, sit down with your logs for an evaluation. If you're consistently taking in too many calories, try to identify what triggers your overeating. Do you scarf down a huge dinner because you arrive home from work starving? Maybe your breakfast and lunch are low on filling nutrients such as fiber and protein, leaving you hungry even if you're eating plenty of calories. If your meals are already nutrient-rich, maybe you need a small afternoon snack. If your log shows that you often snack when feeling bored, angry or anxious, you may be using food to deal with negative emotions. When looking at your activity log, take note of which exercises give you the most energy and which seem to correlate with faster weight loss.
Long-Term Success
Try to track your food and activities diligently for at least a month so you can learn the calorie contents of your most-eaten foods and identify your best and worst habits. Beyond that time period, do your best to keep detailed logs, but don't feel that you must record every detail every day; some days you may be too busy to complete a full entry. Instead, focus on keeping track of the most pertinent details, such as the type and amount of food. It's far more important to maintain basic journaling habits than it is to keep a perfectly detailed log.
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