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