Tracking What you Eat

One of the key steps to losing weight is tracking what you eat. You know you need to do it, but here are some important reasons WHY and some suggestions on HOW you can do it.

Tracking What you Eat

                                                    

Five Key Reasons for Keeping a Food Journal / Diary

• Stay Accountable: 

Recording what you eat gives you personal accountability. You ate it, you record it. It raises your awareness of how much you are eating in the way of calories, and it also helps with portion control. We usually eat much more than we think we do. 

• Stay Aware: 

Tracking food helps you stay under a calorie limit. You will begin to make healthier choices if you know where the calories you are consuming are coming from. Foods with lower caloric values suddenly become much more attractive because you can eat more food for less calories!

• Stay Focused: 

Getting into the habit of tracking what you eat keeps you focused on your small and big goals. If you start gaining weight or losing weight too quickly, you can read your food diary and easily look into the reasons this might be happening. 

• Stay in Control: 

Knowing what you have consumed makes it easier to balance food intake with how much exercise you are getting. You need to fuel the fire if you're working out a lot, and transversely, on days when you're not working out, you won't need to eat as much. 

• Stay Informed: 

Keeping a long term record of the food you are eating makes it possible to compare your weight loss and / or gains with the food you have eaten in a particular week. This way, you can gauge what foods are helping you reach your goals and which foods are not. 

... some great reasons to do this, but how?

There are some excellent ways to keep a record of what you have eaten. None of them need to be difficult, and it all depends on what works for you. 

My personal preference is My Fitness Pal. 

My Fitness Pal: Tracking food is easy with MFP. Food can be added online, or via the app. It has an extensive data base of foods and will calculate the calories for you. One of its best features is that you can add your own recipes or meals and the next time you eat one, it remembers how many calories in all of the ingredients and you don't need to work them out each time. Brilliant. 

This app / website doesn't only allow you to calculate calories and track food, it also works out your daily allowance, subtracts food from your allowance as you consume it, and adds calories when you add cardio workouts. Once you get used to using it, it is a great tool. 

The picture above is a screen shot of my profile from the website, but I use the app every single day.

Another way of tracking food is keeping a food journal or diary. Write down everything you eat for each meal. There are other tools like calorie counters that would be great for this. As long as you are tracking food, it really doesn't matter how it's done.

One method that I have used in the past is Weight Watchers. While the other ways are free, and you do have to pay to attend WW meetings or use the online tools, this is another great way to track your food, using the patented WW 'points' system. Attending meetings also gives you the added bonus of a support network of people. 

Whatever you decide to do, keep a track of what you eat, every time you eat it. You will soon start to become much more aware of how many calories you are consuming and how many you should be having to lose weight. 

I recommend My Fitness Pal because 1. It does everything for you and 2. It doesn't cost a thing, but if pen and paper, using a calorie counter or attending WW meetings works for you, then go for it. The are heaps of other ways to do this. At the end of the day, if works for you, just do it! 

Happy Tracking!