Trying to lose weight or stick to a healthy diet can be hard enough without adding the burden of keeping a food journal to your regime. However, according to many dietitians and nutritionists, a food journal may be just what you need to see your dieting efforts pay off.
According to an article in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietics with the "weighty" title, Self-Monitoring and Eating-Related Behaviors Are Associated with 12-Month Weight Loss in Postmenopausal Overweight-to-Obese Women, study participants who self-monitored their weight loss diets by regularly weighing themselves and keeping food journals were more successful than those who didn't. 123 women participated in the study. At the end of the year, the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center (Seattle, USA) team discovered that:
- Keeping journals "was associated with a greater percent weight loss."
- Skipping meals was associated with less weight loss (over 3.6 kilograms).
- Dining out for lunch once a week or more resulted in less weight loss (2.2 kilograms).
From these findings, the researchers concluded that regular journaling, eating meals at regular intervals and home cooking were the keys to achieving weight loss goals.
How to Keep a Food Journal
Researchers at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center emphasised that the more detailed a journal was, the more effectively it worked. While a Washington Post reporter who covered the study remarked that, "recording my food intake seems to backfire on me; my obsessive personality reacts to journaling by, well, obsessing about food," it may be that "obsessing about food" is what it takes to overcome bad eating habits.
There are two ways to keep a food journal:
- The "old-fashioned" way is to carry a pen and notebook with you wherever you go.
- The "high tech" way is to download a food journal app on to your mobile device and carry it with you wherever you go.
Which method is better? The old-fashioned way seems to get top billing with many who have tried it. Their reasoning is that writing things down in longhand makes them "stick" better, while an app is too easy. Others argue that weight loss apps have kilojoule counters and other aids built into them. If you're facing a choice between a banana and a banana split, you can quickly discover just how far that banana split will set you back from realising your weight loss goals.
One compromise may be to keep a notebook journal for a period of time and then switch to an app. Aside from writing down what you eat, a good weight loss journal should also include at least some of the following:
- Nutritional information, including kilojoules, fat content, vitamins, protein, carbohydrates, etc. If you write down this information, you will remember it.
- Use red ink or a highlighter to identify those foods you have trouble resisting.
- When you are tempted to eat between scheduled meals (or yield to the temptation), jot down some of the reasons why you think you were tempted. Was it stress? Were you caught off-guard when a friend invited you out for lunch?
- A "craving scale" of 1 to 10 can help you objectively look at those unhealthy food cravings you may have.
- Make sure to also take note of the size of the portions of foods you eat.
You may find other helpful things to jot down in your food journal. For example, you may also want to include your exercise program in your weight loss journal.
Yes, keeping a food journal can sound like it is a tedious (and sometimes embarrassing) chore, but if you think of it objectively as a kind of scientific study, it may provide you with fascinating insights into eating habits you were unconscious of before. It will certainly make you think twice before reaching for a dessert or skipping a meal to make up for yielding to temptation after lunch. That in itself is reason enough to spend a few minutes jotting down notes in your journal.
