The Basics
Keeping a food diary is an excellent first step in assessing how you eat now and why you eat the way you do. It will help you target your current problems and look into the root of them. In the end, it will also help you to design the eating plan that is best for you. Here are some things you can track with a food diary:
- Fat grams, carbs, protein, fiber, etc.
- Identify your danger zones
- Pinpoint lapses
- Assess your reasons for eating (aside from true hunger)
- Gauge your appetite and/or cravings
- Track your portion sizes
- Record your feelings after eating
Feel free to use the KISS -- Keep It Simple, Sweetie! -- principle. The first real food diary I ever kept was a sight. I was "enthusiastic" enough to make it as difficult as possible! I entered in all of my meals and snacks into an Excel template; then I entered my goals at the bottom. As the day progressed, I would type in my fat grams or calories (whatever I happened to be counting at the time!) and then I balanced it out with my goal as the day passed to see how I was doing. Constantly adding up my totals made me very anxious. Instead of calmly assessing my intake at the end of the day, I got a little obsessive about it and checked it every few hours, figuring my totals up to the hundredth decimal place!
Now, if you have the skill and time to go all out, more power to you! You can still do your diary on the computer and not be as exact as I tried to be. No matter how you keep the diary, you should be honest. It won't do you any good if you fudge. The closer you can track yourself the better the results. In retrospect, personally, I see that I wasted valuable time formatting fonts on my charts when I could have been taking a walk! Find out what works for you: if charting your progress keeps you motivated, do it; if the easier the better, just use a simple notebook as described in the instructions below. It's all up to you!
So, let's get started on your food diary. Grab a stack of notebook paper and staple it together or put it in a report cover or binder. Or maybe one of your kids' theme books from last year is lying around waiting to be used. Anything will do. So long as you keep up with it and use it honestly, it's a food diary. Now you must decide what you are going to focus on in your food diary.
