subject: 5 Reasons Why You Must Keep A Weightloss Diary [print this page] There are many ways in which you can aid your weightloss journey to bring you to your weightloss
goals.
I have in the past spoken about momentum and the benefits of being active, but I now I want to let
you know of something else that will aid you to get to your perfect weight goal even more quickly.
In our lives we have,if not all of us than most of us, kept a diary of events - either events to come or
that have been and this has made these events important to us so that we remember and/or focus
on them.
So if losing weight is important to you why not keep a diary? You could make notes of how you feel
during your weightloss plan, how much exercise you've done or plan to do each day and whether
you've been able to forfill this commitment.
This could be very valuable information to you as you'll be able to see how much effort you're putting
in verses how good you feel and how much weight you've lost. You can then judge for yourself how
much you need to change this by to get to your desired result.
Another thing that is a good idea to keep track of is your daily food intake and portion control. There
is a very interesting finding in a study from Kaiser Permanente Health Research Centre in Oregon, USA
of nearly 1700 overweight adults who followed a healthy eating and activity plan for 6 months. They
were advised to keep daily records of what they had consumed whilst they were on the plan and at
the end of the study the average weight loss was around 13lbs - but the most interesting finding was
that the more food records people kept, the more weight they lost! Infact the people who didn't keep
any food intake records lost 9lbs, whereas those who kept 6 or more records per week lost about 20lbs
- and that is an amazing difference.
There are loads of reasons why keeping an exercise and food intake diary is a good aid to weightloss
plans and here are a just a few:
1.It holds you accountable to yourself and brings self awareness - not many overweight
people realise the true total amount of what they eat in one day compared to natually slim people.
2.Knowing that you are going to keep a diary of your food intake helps you to make better
choices in your food - after all who is it that you're falling if you don't write it down - there's only one
person who your cheating on and that's you!
3.It draws attention to damaging eating habits and patterns which maybe happening
without your consious knowledge - like missing meals, binge eating or picking at unhealthy snacks
whilst watching TV or sitting in the car.
4.It helps you become more aware of your own emotional eating habits. We all have the
comfort foods whether we like to admit it or not and supprisingly enough it's not just the sad, down
and lonely feelings that bring on the comfort food cravings, there are many more including believe it
or not; happiness, tireness, stress and social eating to name but a few.
5.Keeping an exercise diary helps you plan to be more active on a daily basis. Having a
pedometer is a very handy tool, keeping track of each days numbers can give a real sense of
achievement but if you don't want to go this route, make a note of your own activites each day and
improve on them. It is also helpful to put how long it took to do certain daily tasks as this can also
give you a boost when you look back finding that the walk you do used to take you 1 hour and now
it takes you only 45 minutes!
Now doing this can seem at first a little awkward and confronting - but just think about the amount of
weight it could help you lose. See it as a friendly help and not as something to get depressed or angry
about - the more honest you are with your diary, the more it will help you to find and recognise the
problem areas and thoughts you need to change to aid you to lose weight and get back in control of
your body.
by: Q Lawrence
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