Keeping A Diet Journal Helps With Weight Loss

Dieting, in one form or another, is so prevalent in our society today that it can easily be dubbed one of American’s most detested pastimes. It is no secret that for most people dieting has become a life-long vicious cycle that drains them of their physical and mental energy before ultimately failing them in the long run.

Interestingly, a small percentage of dieters have discovered the secret to successfully loosing weight and maintaining that weight over an extended period of time without sacrificing their health, happiness and sanity. So, what’s their secret? The secret to long-term successful dieting lies in possessing a thorough understanding of yourself, your body, and the various stress factors that contribute to your bad eating habits and consequent weight gain.

Maintaining a diet journal is an effective first step towards successful long-term dieting. By maintaining an account of your daily eating habits and other factors that either help or hinder your diet efforts you will be able to see trends in your daily behavior and alter these trends to improve your diet success rate. The following is a list of important factors to consider when first setting up your diet journal.

BE THOROUGH

Be honest with yourself. Remember that every morsel of food and drink that passes through your lips counts towards your ultimate weight loss goal. Be sure to record what you eat, when you eat it and how much of it you eat. You do not have to count calories. However, it is helpful to keep a running estimate of the amount of calories you consume in a day. A quick Internet search will provide you with the calorie count of most common foods. Take a good look at the items you consume in a day. If your list consists mainly of sweets, processed foods and/or fast food than your diet is not headed in the right direction.

MAKE EVERY CALORIE COUNT

The Food Pyramid is the long-term dieter’s best friend. It is especially important that you eat a balanced and healthy diet while attempting to loose weight.  By definition diets require you to restrict calories thus increasing the likelihood of malnutrition. Numerous studies have proven that those diets which deprive the body of vital nutrients tend to have a higher failure rate over time. Successful dieters are able to analyze their daily food intake and eliminate “empty calories” from their diets. Foods such as potato chips, alcoholic beverages and candy which contain a high calorie count but provide the body with no significant amount of nutrients are said to contain “empty calories”. In order to steer your diet in the right direction you should replace the empty calories you consume with vital calories found in antioxidant rich fruits and vegetables.

CONQUER YOUR MOODS

Our moods contribute to our long-term weight loss just as much as diet and exercise. Our moods can reek havoc on our mental state and cause us to loose track of our long-term weight loss goals. For example, dieters are most likely to derail their diets on days when their moods can best be described as depressed, angry, stressed, tired, sleepy or hungry. Even though it is impossible to maintain an upbeat mood all the time it is possible to recognize the factors that contribute to our bad moods and try to minimize these factors. For instance, if your mood can best be described as sleepy four days out of a week than it is clear that in order to have the physical and mental energy to continue your long-term diet plan you need to alter your sleeping patterns to include more hours of sleep on any given night.

DON’T UNDERESTIMATE YOUR WORKOUT LEVELS

All of our lives are hectic. Between work, kids, laundry and soccer practice we don’t always have time to spent in the gym. Since all dieters know that weight loss is achieved by burning more calories than one consumes the inability to make time for the gym can often lead to feelings of failure and depression which ultimately cause some dieters to abandon their diets. Be sure to give yourself credit for all of your activities and you just might be surprised by your activity level. For example, if after work you choose to play in the backyard with your kids instead of going to the gym count that time spent playing in the backyard as one of your daily workouts. If you spent the morning grocery shopping and carrying those groceries up two flights of stairs to your apartment include that as a small activity, etc…

RECOGNIZE TRENDS

Do you consume most of your empty calories on the weekend? Do most of your empty calories come from sweets or alcoholic beverages? Do you consume most of your daily calories in the morning or at night? Are your energy levels at their highest first thing in the morning? Do you do most of your physical activities alone or with friends? Are you most likely to describe your mood as tired on Mondays or sleepy on Thursdays? Do you eat the same thing on a daily basis? These are examples of the trends your diet journal should help you recognize and fix so that you can achieve long term diet success.

HAVE FUN

Maintaining your diet journal should be an enjoyable activity and not a daily chore. Use humor or any other creative means to personalize your journal. Take time out of your busy schedule to reflect back on your day and plan out your next day.

YOUR DAILY DIET JOURNAL

A diet journal is a helpful tool to allow you to objectively jot down your eating habits on a daily basis. Observing trends in your eating habits will help to you make the necessary changes to become more healthy. Download our diet journal for your daily use. Let us know how it works out!

Download Your Diet Journal!

HELPFUL TIPS

1. Register at Fitday.com: a free, comprehensive health and fitness website featuring an Online diet and weight loss journal.
2. Invest in a food scale that calculates the amount and nutritional value of the food you consume. This is vital to maintaining an accurate diet journal.

Weighmax Digital Kitchen Bowl Scale 5kg/11 Lb Black

NewLine Digital Glass Nutrition Calculator Diet Food Scale, Blue

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