About 25 percent of weight loss success is due to self-monitoring your behavior, according to Leigh Rich, Ph.D., in a report published in the January 2004 issue of "Monitor on Psychology." Tracking calories, fat grams, or other factors helps you develop a "healthy obsession" that overcomes the body's resistance to change, according to Daniel Kirschenbaum, PhD, director of the Center for Behavioral Medicine and Sport Psychology in Chicago.
Diets
In the broadest sense, your diet is whatever you eat each day, whether or not you follow a particular eating plan. Generally, though, the term "diet" often refers to an eating program designed to help you lose weight, or to prevent or manage a chronic condition such as diabetes mellitus, kidney disease, or high blood pressure. Some diets limit or eliminate particular foods or nutrients, including sugar, fats, gluten, or animal products, while others focus on foods high in protein or other nutrients.
Choosing a Food Diary
Food diaries come in several forms, including written charts, on-line trackers, and smart phone applications. To keep an accurate account of your food intake, you should record each meal, snack, and beverage as soon as you consume it, so choose a format that your find convenient and easy to use. If you need to track specific nutrients, such as fat, calories, protein, or carbohydrates, choose a format that makes it easy for you to track this information and calculate daily totals.
Online Food Diaries
If you are near a computer all day, you may choose to use an online tracker such as the one available on the U.S. Department of Agriculture website called MyPyramid Tracker. On-line trackers compute the nutrient values and daily totals, saving you the additional steps of looking up calorie content and fat grams in a reference book and making calculations. Some people, however, find that the data entry process can be cumbersome or inconvenient and prefer using a manual food diary.
Manual Food Diaries
A pen-and-ink food diary may be the best choice if you do not have easy access to a computer or prefer to post your daily meals on your refrigerator. Download a template from a website such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or make your own. To make a simple food diary, divide an 8-in. by 11-in. sheet of plain paper into seven columns, one for each day of the week, making the lines parallel to the shorter edge of the paper. Draw four lines parallel to the longer edge of the paper, one for each meal and one for snacks.
References
- West Penn Allegheny Health System: How to Be a Successful Gastric Bypass Loser
- USDA: MyPyramidTracker
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Balancing Calories
- "Monitor on Psychology;" Bringing more effective tools to the weight-loss table; Leigh E. Rich; January 2004
- Merck Manuals Online Library: Diets
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