How to keep a food Diary

Tracking food to avoid a diet derailment

Tips from the X-Weighted Fitness Team.

A food diary can be as simple as a week’s entries in a notebook, detailing exactly what you ate and drank—not what you thought you did. Or you can draw up a weekly chart and run off copies, so you can enter exactly what you ate and drank each hour of the day and how you were feeling when you did.

If you pledge to note every single nibble and how big the portion was, after seven days you’ll make some valuable discoveries. Even on days when you thought you were doing well, with perhaps one little lapse, you might find you were misleading yourself.

If you note when and where you’re eating, and what you were thinking or doing as you munched, a food diary can quickly identify patterns. Perhaps you eat under stress, when you’re alone, on the run or late at night. A week’s worth of paying attention will reveal all.

Jotting down your eats makes you “mind the moment.” That’s what this whole lifestyle adjustment is all about. If you’re attuned to how you eat, while you’re eating, you’re less likely to put something harmful into your mouth. This is why food diaries are not only useful at the beginning of a weight-loss program, but also as a monitor for when you hit a setback or plateau and need to make some conscious adjustments.

With just one extra pen stroke per entry, a food diary can also keep track of how many servings of fruits and vegetables you eat per day, a number most North Americans find difficult to increase. Canada’s Food Guide suggests 5–10 servings a day.

Finally, a food diary can encourage and motivate. File your first seven-day record away and compare it to another seven-day record a month or two later. The changes in habit and the gaps and problem areas still to be addressed will be evident.

The hardest part of keeping a food diary is accurately noting the portion size. So measure it out, if not with a utensil than with another meaningful measure of quantity; for example, a piece of cheese the size of your thumb.

Make sure you carry it with you everywhere. If you print out a seven-day record, you can fold it up and keep it in your pocket. Jot down everything. This tool only works if it’s used. At the end of the week, highlight the obvious high-fat, high-portion entries. Note when and why they took place. Brainstorm some alternatives and changes in your approach. Count up the fruit and vegetable tally then try to improve it by one serving per day.

[Editor’s Note: You can download a good, basic food diary from FitWatch.com or TrueStarHealth.com.]

Written by: The X-Weighted Fitness Team

fight binge eating

Regain control of your diet with tips from the X-Weighted experts

Anyone who’s tried losing weight through dieting has probably been sideswiped at some point or another by one of the sabotage twins: emotional eating and binge eating. Use these tips from the X-Weighted fitness team to fight back.

Emotional Eating
It’s a fact of life that our bodies react with feelings of reward when fed certain substances. Think of how alcohol depresses the central nervous system, the respiratory rate, and the heart rate and in the process relieves anxiety and reduces inhibitions. Or how chocolate triggers the release of mood-brightening opiates. Or how eating sugary, high-fat foods actually signals our stress-fighting hormones to settle down.

But like alcohol, chocolatey, sugary, and fatty foods are merely short-term coping strategies to relieve stress and boost our mood. If we repeatedly lean on them to get us past those emotional dips, we will certainly pack on unhealthy amounts of fat.

To avoid being broadsided by emotional eating, try some of the control tactics of problem drinkers:
1. Keep unhealthy foods out of your environment. Don’t go there and don’t let them come to you. Recognize the situations that trigger your cravings.
2. Be ready with a substitute for those situations, such as an activity, a healthy snack, or a distraction.
3. Tackle the feelings beneath those cravings. Make it a priority to relieve stress or deal with anger or anxiety.
4. Emphasize healthier behaviours the better part of the time. Eat a balanced diet so you’re not hungry, eat at consistent intervals, and exercise regularly.
5. Give the urge for an emotional face-stuffing a little time to pass. Ask yourself if it’s a need or a habit, then wait for meal or snack time.
6. Practise saying “No.” Start with once a day and work yourself up to as many times as it takes for the habit to stick.

Binge Eating
Some questions to ask if you suspect you might be a binge eater:
1. Do you have repeated episodes of eating quickly and uncontrollably when you’re not really hungry?
2. Are these triggered by such emotions as anger, anxiety, or boredom?
3. Do you then eat until you’re uncomfortably full?
4. Do you hide and/or hoard food and feel disgust and guilt during and after these episodes?

The U.S.-based National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Disorders estimates that 10 to 15 per cent of people who are mildly obese have binge eating disorder. Among the severely obese, the percentage is higher. Many also have symptoms of depression.

If you recognize yourself in this description, consult a doctor and/or psychologist to understand the reasons for your behaviour. Treatment can be as basic as tracking your eating habits and developing new strategies to deal with your moods, and as beneficial as triumphing over depression.

Written by: The X-Weighted Fitness Team