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By Alice Daugherty


When you first start your diet one of the things you will learn right away is that maintaining a food journal is very helpful. Keeping your food journal not only helps you see clearly what you are consuming, it helps you see what you are not eating. For example, after keeping a food log for a few days, you might see that you are not taking in very many vegetables but that you are consuming lots of sugar and bad carbohydrates. Writing all of it down will allow you to see precisely which parts of your diet plan really need to change as well as how much exercise you are going to need to do to make sure that you keep your caloric intake in check.

But what happens if you write every little thing down but no weight drop off of you? You can track your foods the right way or the wrong way. A food journal is more than just a simple list of the foods you eat during a day. Other kinds of important information will certainly need to be written down also. Here are a number of the suggestions that can help you become far more successful at food tracking.

Be as particular as possible while you write down what you consume. You have to do more than merely write down "salad" into your food record. Write down all the ingredients in the salad and the type of dressing you used. You should also include the amounts of the foods you consume. "Cereal" will not be sufficient but "one cup Fiber One cereal" is acceptable. Remember the more you eat of something the more calories you consume so it is important that you list quantities so that you know exactly how much of everything you're eating and how many calories you need to burn.

Write down the time you're consuming stuff. This will allow you to figure out precisely what times of day you feel the most hungry, when you usually reach for snacks and then you can figure out how to deal with those times. After several days you'll note that while you might be eating lunch at the same time every day, you are still hungry an hour later. You should also be able to discover whether or not you happen to be eating because you're bored. This is important because those are times that you can pick out other things to fill your time with than food.



Write down your feelings while you eat. This can help you determine when you use food to help soothe emotional issues. It will also identify the meals you choose when you are in certain moods. Lots of us will reach intuitively for processed food when we feel upset or angry and we are more likely to choose healthy options when we feel happy or content. Paying attention to what you reach for if you find yourself upset will help you stock similar but more healthy items in your house for when you need a snack-you could also begin talking to someone to figure out why you cure moods with food (if that is something that you actually do).




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