Keep A Food Diary: After All, It's True What They Say - Confession Is Good For The Soul

If you are serious about losing weight, the only way to do so is by cutting back on the calories you eat each day.   And there is no way to know how many you are eating unless you keep track of them.  I remember when I first started keeping a food diary.  I was stunned to see how quickly the calories and fats I kept track of added up!  Because I was so used to eating heavy meals and picking in between them, I would sometimes find that I had reached my 1,400 to 1,500 calorie a day limit way before dinner!  And the fat?  I could consume almost a week's worth in one "off" day! Yikes!  The good news is that, by keeping meticulous track of what I ate, forcing me to face what I was doing to my body each day, I was able to, relatively quickly, change those bad habits.

In your diary, record everything you eat, and I mean everything - from the salad you had for lunch to the small handful of nuts you grabbed on the way out the door.  You'll be surprised how quickly the calories add up, especially if you are someone who "grazes" throughout the day, or includes fast, or processed foods in your diet.  Buy a book of Food Counts and get in the habit of recording the calories of everything you eat.  Or find a list of Food Counts on line and save it as a favorite. Keeping track of everything you eat will keep you honest, and hold you accountable, much like confession does for your spiritual well-being.

Confession (bringing those things that weigh your conscience down out in the open) helps you to stop repeating them because when you hear yourself say them out loud, you "own up to them" and can deal with them.  The exact same process is at work when you record everything you eat.   Not only will you want to stop eating the high-calorie empty foods you see splashed across the pages of your life, but you'll soon learn that you will actually want to eat more of the foods that are good for you, and you will feel much better when you eat them. 

At first, recording everything you eat will seem like a lot of work, but before you know it, you begin to memorize the calories of most common foods.  I don't even use my Food Counts book anymore - haven't done so in years.  I feel like The Terminator (in the original movie) when he's naked and scans all the people in the biker bar to see whose clothes will fit him best.  That's how my brain works when I scan a menu.  After all this time, I just "know" what to order and approximately how many calories and how much fat the meal will contain.  And it wasn't just the Food Counts book that helped me do this.  When you start subscribing to healthy magazines and use healthy cookbooks (see my February 19th Blog post), they contain nutrition information for every recipe in them, helping you to eventually translate that knowledge to things you order at restaurants and other places.

(Note that if you are concerned about hypertension, you might want to record mgs. of salt, as well.  As for me, with my history of cancer and resulting cardiac issues, I count fat grams and calculate the percentage of fat in my diet each day, trying to keep it to 15% or less of my total calories).

I've shared with you the importance of eating plenty of antioxidant-rich foods, of buying organic produce when necessary, of eating the right amount of fiber, how many calories you should be eating for your age, height, and weight, and much more.  Keeping a Food Diary is how you put it all together.  And it tells me that you are serious about eating healthier - about making 2011 the year that you take charge of your life.  Try it - and after a few days, get back to me and let me know how you're doing.

Until next time, happy and healthy eating!