5 top tips for keeping a food diary & getting results!

PREPARE

For real success you need to understand the benefits of recording your intake.  A food diary not only helps you to record your food and liquid intake, but also factors that influence intake, it helps you assess the quality of your nutritional habits, and evaluate how your diet compares with a balanced healthy diet.

Before you start, research what is considered a healthy balanced diet and think about what your goals are – i.e. are you trying to reduce cholesterol, blood pressure or do you just generally want to achieve a healthy weight and diet?  Take a look at http://www.eatwell.gov.uk/ for guidelines and http://www.bda.uk.com/foodfacts/index.html for helpful fact sheets.

For continued success you need to plan ahead and work out how you are going to log your data.

Invest in a pretty notebook or download a food diary that has been specifically designed for the purpose. You can even find databases online where you can input your data to assess the quality of your diet.

In my experience it is vital to not only record what you eat, but keep track of what prompts you to eat – note down the time of day, where you are and what mood you are in when eating.  It’s also useful to know how hungry you felt at the time of consumption – 1 being ravenous and 10 being completely full.

When you look back at your diary to assess how you have been, this information will help you identify patterns of non-hunger-related eating (for example, if you tend to eat when you’re bored, depressed, hanging out with friends, etc) and highlight opportunities to cut calories.

LOGGING DATA

Start by logging your intake religiously for 2 weekdays and 1 weekend day in your new notebook.  Don’t change what you are consuming – stick with your normal routine to start with.  Keep your notebook / diary to hand at all times and record everything from morning to night.  For best results log quantities too and don’t forget fluids – be as detailed and specific as possible.  For example measure your cereal and milk, equate the size of a piece of fruit to something like a CD case etc If you eat out, and don’t know exactly what or how much you have eaten write down approximates.

ASSESSING YOUR INTAKE

Once you have a few days of food intake logged take a look and see if you can identify any patterns. For example, do you find yourself eating a larger portion or certain foods around 8pm when you are bored and your hunger rating is “8”(not hungry)? Do you skip breakfast and then eat a high fat snack mid morning or have a large lunch?  Identify patterns and find ‘snacks’ you can cut back on or substitute for something healthier.

LOOK AT THE BALANCE

Look at a balanced diet or the eat well plate and compare your food log to it.  Have you consistently (everyday) had your 2 pieces of fruit and 3 veg to get your 5 a day? How about water – are you drinking enough? Coffee, tea and alcohol – how much are you drinking? Meat – do you have more than the recommended daily amounts?

MAKE CHANGES

OK – So lets get results and make a difference – take some time to think about exactly what you would like to achieve this year. Do you want to lose weight? Overall be healthier? Eat more fruits and vegetables? Eat fewer sweets?

Using your food log, try to set yourself some SMART (Specific Measurable Attainable Relevant and Time-bound) goals.

For example, if it looks like you are eating 2500 calories per day, but you’ve worked out your calorie needs to be only around 2000 calories, you could set a goal to lose four to five pounds over the course of the next month by eating 250 fewer calories per day and burning about 250 calories with exercise per day.

Look at your food log and specify how you are going to amend what you’re eating to help cut those 250 calories. What have you been eating that you could do without or substitute for healthier varieties?

Write down a plan what kind of exercise you will do to burn an average of 250 extra calories per day. Think about joining a local class or enlisting the help of a personal trainer.

The key here is to set goals that you can and will achieve, putting you well on your way to making permanent lifestyle changes.

Have you started a food log and run into problems or have questions? Let us know via our facebook site www.facebook.com/fit4mum on Twitter @fit4mum or email us [email protected]