Too many people focus on the minute details when dieting, and don’t look at the big picture. All you really need to kick-start your progress is two simple steps, than can reap huge rewards.
Dieting is, for most people, really hard.
First of all, you can easily be perplexed by all the different dieting approaches, food plans, and the huge amount of advice that is out there. Each month the fitness magazines publish a different plan for you to follow, which often completely contradicts their previous plans, or goes against other advice you’ve heard. With such an overwhelming variety of information coming at you, it’s easy to get confused, and when you’re confused, you’re far less likely to stay on track to achieve your final goals or even get anywhere close to them.
This is where a food diary becomes the most useful dieting tool ever.
Forget fat burning pills, ultra tough cardio workouts, and celebrity fad diets — if there’s one thing that guarantees diet compliance and success, it’s a food diary.
The beauty of keeping a food diary is twofold.
Firstly, keeping a food diary lets you see exactly what you’re eating from day to day, and enables you to monitor what effect certain foods have on your body. Say for instance, you have a couple of days where you feel really good, have lots of energy, and work exceptionally hard in the gym, but then you have one day where you feel run down, lethargic and irritable. When that happens, you can simply look back at your food diary, and see what foods (or lack thereof, in some cases) may have caused this sudden change in you.
Secondly, keeping a food journal guilt trips you into being good! If you write down what you eat, you’re much less likely to let those sneaky little treats worm their way back in because a food diary is a way of keeping yourself accountable. You’ll feel bad for having to put that snack size candy bar, bag of popcorn, or serving of fries you had into your diary, which will make you abstain from all the foods you know you need to avoid, yet often don’t have the willpower to resist.
The key to keeping a successful food diary is to be brutally honest. There’s no point whatsoever in not writing certain foods down, just because you know you shouldn’t have eaten them. The whole idea is that writing down everything you eat means you’ll be stricter with yourself, and stay on track.
If necessary, have a friend or family member look over your food diary once a week, and ask them to be ultra critical of you. Don’t have any excuses lined up, and just accept when you’ve made a mistake. Be as detailed as possible when logging your food, and don’t miss anything out.
To make this even simpler, you can keep your food diary online, or even use a calorie tracker as your "food diary", so every day when you plan your food to fit into your calorie allowance, save a screen shot, or print off the page, and keep it in a safe place, so you can look over it again later.
A food diary also lets you strategically plan little “cheats”. If you’ve stuck to your diet one hundred percent for at least a week, allow yourself a small cheat meal, where you eat a little of what you fancy, or some non-diet food. Not only does this help keep you sane when you are following a weight loss diet, but those special treats also motivate you to stay strict for the rest of the week. Keep these treats to no more than once a week though, and don’t let them turn into all out food binges.
There are your two simple dieting tricks — you keep a food diary, and you are entirely honest in it. Both are amazingly easy to do, yet so effective because they allow you to hold yourself to verifiable standards even later on. Get going with your food diary now, and start feeling the benefits as you transform your theoretical knowledge of what and how much to eat into practice in a way that you can see later on.
First of all, you can easily be perplexed by all the different dieting approaches, food plans, and the huge amount of advice that is out there. Each month the fitness magazines publish a different plan for you to follow, which often completely contradicts their previous plans, or goes against other advice you’ve heard. With such an overwhelming variety of information coming at you, it’s easy to get confused, and when you’re confused, you’re far less likely to stay on track to achieve your final goals or even get anywhere close to them.
This is where a food diary becomes the most useful dieting tool ever.
Forget fat burning pills, ultra tough cardio workouts, and celebrity fad diets — if there’s one thing that guarantees diet compliance and success, it’s a food diary.
The beauty of keeping a food diary is twofold.
Firstly, keeping a food diary lets you see exactly what you’re eating from day to day, and enables you to monitor what effect certain foods have on your body. Say for instance, you have a couple of days where you feel really good, have lots of energy, and work exceptionally hard in the gym, but then you have one day where you feel run down, lethargic and irritable. When that happens, you can simply look back at your food diary, and see what foods (or lack thereof, in some cases) may have caused this sudden change in you.
Secondly, keeping a food journal guilt trips you into being good! If you write down what you eat, you’re much less likely to let those sneaky little treats worm their way back in because a food diary is a way of keeping yourself accountable. You’ll feel bad for having to put that snack size candy bar, bag of popcorn, or serving of fries you had into your diary, which will make you abstain from all the foods you know you need to avoid, yet often don’t have the willpower to resist.
The key to keeping a successful food diary is to be brutally honest. There’s no point whatsoever in not writing certain foods down, just because you know you shouldn’t have eaten them. The whole idea is that writing down everything you eat means you’ll be stricter with yourself, and stay on track.
If necessary, have a friend or family member look over your food diary once a week, and ask them to be ultra critical of you. Don’t have any excuses lined up, and just accept when you’ve made a mistake. Be as detailed as possible when logging your food, and don’t miss anything out.
To make this even simpler, you can keep your food diary online, or even use a calorie tracker as your "food diary", so every day when you plan your food to fit into your calorie allowance, save a screen shot, or print off the page, and keep it in a safe place, so you can look over it again later.
Read more: 1500 Calorie Diet – How Does It Look Like?
A food diary also lets you strategically plan little “cheats”. If you’ve stuck to your diet one hundred percent for at least a week, allow yourself a small cheat meal, where you eat a little of what you fancy, or some non-diet food. Not only does this help keep you sane when you are following a weight loss diet, but those special treats also motivate you to stay strict for the rest of the week. Keep these treats to no more than once a week though, and don’t let them turn into all out food binges.
There are your two simple dieting tricks — you keep a food diary, and you are entirely honest in it. Both are amazingly easy to do, yet so effective because they allow you to hold yourself to verifiable standards even later on. Get going with your food diary now, and start feeling the benefits as you transform your theoretical knowledge of what and how much to eat into practice in a way that you can see later on.
- “How Do You Stay Motivated? 4 Tips from a Dietician” By Angela Hattaway. Accessed on April 26, 2012. Retrieved from http://www.fitday.com/fitness-articles/fitness/how-do-you-stay-motivated-4-tips-from-a-dietitian.html
- Photo courtesy of ampm on Flickr: www.flickr.com/photos/ampm/3489504106
- Photo courtesy of ampm on Flickr: www.flickr.com/photos/ampm/3512573723