Week 45 – The Importance of Tracking

Food tracking is extremely important when dieting!

Food journals can certainly help with weight loss, since it’s a record of exactly what you are consuming and when.

Keeping a food diary or journal is very helpful for weight loss. It can help you see patterns to what, when and why you eat. It can also be a deterrent to over eating because you don’t want to write down that you over ate something. It keeps you accountable. If you are a results person there are many free online websites and apps for tracking your food and activity each day that are quick and easy to use.

Studies show that keeping a food diary may help you lose as much as twice the amount of weight. Is it a new magic pill? Well, it’s really an old magic pill. The benefit of keeping a food diary — or basically writing down what you eat — has been known for a long time.

Many people see a food diary as one extra thing they have to do, but as the findings from this study show, it can have a very powerful impact. Keeping a food diary does not have to be time consuming or complicated. Here are some simple steps to keep in mind.

On a sheet of paper or in a notebook, write down what you ate, where you were, what time it was, what you were doing and what your mood was.
Be sure and record as you go along. Don’t try to rely on memory at the end of the day — it will ruin the results.
Post your food diary where you can see it (on the refrigerator or on a mirror).
Keep it up for a couple of weeks and review the diary. You’ll notice that you are eating less “bad” food and more “good” food.

There are many Food Tracking apps available, a lot are and some you pay a small fee each month. We all discussed the ones we prefer:-