Weight Loss

t has been noted that exercise alone can not result in weight loss. To shed those extra kilos, one also needs to reduce the number of calories taken in per day. This can be easily done by jotting down calorie consumption, on a day-to-day basis, in a food diary. By keeping a tab of calories take in, the body can be made to burn up stored fat which would eventually result in weight loss.

Food diary as an aid to weight loss
Food diaries can be used as an effective aid in weight loss. It will help you assess your eating pattern and the reasons why such a pattern was followed by you. By monitoring these two factors, it can help you devise way to regulate them and thereby lose weight off your body.

However, keeping and writing in a food diary alone won’t do you good. You will need to make sure that you have written down everything with full honesty. If you are not honest about your calorie consumption pattern and reasons for doing so, there is no point in continuing with this effort. You might as well stop it immediately.

Things to write in a food diary
Food diaries don’t need to be very complicated in nature. You don’t need to write out a full page essay as a daily entry. You can put down everything in a tabular manner with short notes attached to each point. The content of each page can include things like the following:

* The portion sizes of dishes you have eaten.
* The amount of carbs, fat, protein, and fiber content in this portion.
* The underlying reasons for eating (apart from true hunger).
* Your appetite and/or cravings.
* Your feelings after eating.

You can be a little more accurate in keeping a count of the number of calories taken in. You can refer to any food guide that gives you the calorie and other nutrient content of each type of food you had. If you have eaten anything pre-packed, then you can look for these details on the packaging. Jot all this information down in a detailed, tabular manner.

All this may seem a bit tedious at the beginning. Hence, you can begin by jotting down elementary details about your eating behavior. Jot down details like time of eating, portions (fistful, handful, bowlful, plateful and other such rough measurements) eaten, and things you did after meal. Once you have got into the habit, go for a more detailed analysis of your eating habits.

Nipping the problem in the bud
Do remember that the reason behind making this effort is to get at the heart of the matter. Writing a food diary would help you attack the problem right at its point of origin. Recording why you ate/over ate and how you felt after that would help you with finding alternatives to eating.

Writing a food diary can definitely help you in losing weight. The act of writing can arrange a confrontation between you and the unacknowledged reasons that so far had been fuelling your eating habits. Once this confrontation is over, losing weight would be very easy.