In the battle to lose weight, it turns out that a food diary may be your most potent weapon. Keeping a journal of everything that you eat may enable you to see what foods are helping you and what foods are actually damaging your weight loss efforts.
Shedding some pounds is the best thing you can possibly do to improve your wellness and wellbeing, as being lighter is the strongest possible defence against all kinds of chronic health conditions, such as high blood pressure, heart disease and diabetes. Diet chains such as Weight Watchers and Slimming World all advocate that you keep a food diary and document every single morsel that passes over your lips.
Now there are statistics which prove that these companies were right all along. A study has found that overweight people who keep food diaries are likely to lose twice as many pounds as those who tried to lose weight without keeping a diary. For a period of around six months, 1,700 overweight adults were encouraged to follow a specific heart-health diet and to take exercise, keeping notes about what they ate. They also went to a weekly support group where they weighed in and then shared the details of their weekly food diaries. These diaries helped them to work out where all the extra calories were coming from, and to cut back accordingly.
Many people are guilty of mindless eating, meaning that they don’t even think about what they put in their mouth, including popcorn, cookies, afternoon snacks and so on, but a diet diary forces them to stop and think and actually pay attention to what they are eating. It also helps you to keep your food portions under control, as you are forced to actively think about whether to take one slice of bread or two.