Food Diary and Weight Loss

A food diary can be a very useful tool in losing or controlling weight (also see our Guide to Weight Loss), and probably should be the first step of any diet. It has two main functions:

• Planning. A food diary will show you exactly where your calories are coming from, help you plan where you want to make reductions, and tell you how much weight you will lose as a result.
• Motivation. A food diary can also be an excellent source of motivation, not only to start the diet, but also to stick to it.

Step 1 - Record your food intake

Don't start your diet yet, but continue to eat normally for a week. During this week, carry a small notepad and pen with you and write down everything you eat and everything you drink during that week. Write down exactly what you eat and the quantity (estimate if you don't know) and the time of day that you ate or drank it. Don't try to write it down at the end of the day or week; write it down immediately. Leave a space after each item (for step 2, below).

This should be done during a time when you are eating fairly normally. Not, for example, during the traditional Christmas food and sweet binge. During the week of step 1, do not change your eating habits. If you always have a doughnut at coffee break, do not let the fact of having to write it down change this. The idea during this week is not to eat well, but rather to eat normally and record it with 100% honesty. Anything else is just cheating yourself.

Record every item. Even the butter on your toast and the sugar added to your coffee.

Step 2 - Calculate your calorie consumption

After you have recorded your food intake for one week, beside each item write down the calories associated with that food. To calculate the calories, you can use an online counter such as free calorie calculator. Do this at the end of the week, not before.

Step 3 - Analyze your calorie intake

Go through the list and see where you are getting your calories. Try to organize this information in relevant ways:

• How many calories are you getting from healthy food and how many from junk food (calculate the total for each for the whole week)?
• How many calories are you getting from sweets? How many from alcohol? How many from non-alcoholic drinks? Calculate the total for each for the whole week.
• How many calories are you getting from habit eating during the week (e.g. coffee or sweets during work breaks), where you are eating not because you are really hungry but simply because of the environment?

If you are surprised by the results (many people are), this is a good thing, as it means you have learned something useful.

Step 4 - Make a plan (eliminations, reductions, and substitutions)

Ask yourself which areas you would be willing to reduce and which items you would be willing to eliminate. Ask yourself where you are willing to make short-term reductions and where you would be willing to make long-term reductions.

Be honest with yourself and try not to set over-ambitious targets. It is better to set realistic targets and keep to them, then try to cut back too much and be demotivated by failure.

Keep in mind that diet should be gradual and long-term. On-off diets and rapid weight loss plans are not good approaches.

In addition to eliminations, you can get a lot of benefit merely from reductions. For example, 1 spoonful of sugar in your coffee instead of 2. Likewise, you may be able to save calories through substitutions (e.g. lean meat or fish instead of fatty meat, vegetables instead of french fries, baked instead of fried).

Step 5 - Calculate your weight loss

From step 4, add up the total of the calories you would save each week by eliminating these items from your diet. Then divide by 7000 to get the number of kilograms you would lose per week as a result. If you want to know the savings in pounds, divide by 3500 instead.

If you calculate that you are losing more than a kilogram per week (more than 2 pounds/week), then you are probably trying to hard. Health specialists advise that losing weight faster than this is unhealthy and potentially dangerous.

If you calculate that you are losing about half a kilogram per week (about 1 pound/week), then this is a realistic figure. It may not seem much and of course everyone wants to lose weight as fast as possible. However, the important think in any diet is not how much weight you lose but how much weight you keep off long-term. Stay on this diet for half a year and you will have lost 13 kilograms (26 pounds).

If you are losing less than half a kilogram per week (1 pound/week), you have 3 choices: accept a slower weight loss, go back to step 4 to see if you can further reduce, or add exercise to your diet plan.

Note: The above figures are based on 2 pounds per kilogram. I know that there are really 2.2 pounds per kilogram, so please don't send me EMAILs to correct my error. I'm just trying to keep the discussion simple so have rounded off the conversion. I also know that a pound of fat has more than 3500 calories and a kilogram of fat has more than 7000 calories, but body fat is combined with other lower-energy components so one does not need to lose a kilogram of pure fat in order to lose a kilogram of weight.

Step 6 - Write down your plan

Once you have decided on how you will reduce your calorie intake (eliminations, reductions and substitutions), write it down in your notepad. This is your contract with yourself. Remember that it is better to have a plan that you will keep to, rather than one that you will break. If you don't honestly feed that you can commit to this contract, then go back to steps 4 and 5.

Step 7 - Start your diet

At the start of your diet, weigh yourself. This is best done in the morning, without clothes, before you have eaten or drunk anything. Do not weigh yourself again until the end of the week. Your weight goes up and down during the day so it is best to reweigh yourself at the end of the week at the same time of day (morning is most reliable) and under the same circumstances (e.g. no clothes and before breakfast).

If you have lost weight at the end of the week, give yourself a reward. Go to a movie, go bowling, anything to reward yourself that doesn't involve food.

If you haven't lost any weight at the end of a week, do not be discouraged. There are many reasons for weight to vary or not. For example, if you had extra salt the day before, the amount of water your body is retaining can easily be an additional kilogram (2 pounds). Stay with your plan for another week and don't worry.

If you haven't lost any weight after 2 weeks, the plan isn't working. Maybe the plan does not involve enough calorie reductions. Maybe you haven't been exercising as much as usual. Perhaps you haven't been 100% honest. Try to figure out what went wrong and adjust accordingly. If all else fails, go back to step 1 or visit your doctor and ask for his professional advice.

Continuing with the food diary

During the initial steps, the diary helps you to accurately determine your eating habits and evaluate them in terms of where your calorie input is coming from.

Many people find that it is also very useful to continue the diary for the duration of the diet. This allows you to continue to analyze your food and calorie intake, which is particularly helpful if you find that you are losing weight too fast or too slow.

However, the main advantage of continuing the diary is as a motivational tool. Many people find that continuing to record their food intake helps them to stay on plan:

• Eating is often habit related rather than hunger related. For example, one is tired at mid-day and feels like a break, so one picks up a snack, more as a short break than out of real desire. If one has to record this, one might decide just to not bother and do something else for a few minutes instead (e.g. chat with a colleague, have a 0-calorie drink).
• It is easy to fall off-plan and have foods that one previously decided not too. If one has to record this, such cheating is less likely.
• In the worse case, if one does cheat and fails to lose weight over the week, it is possible to look at food consumption over the week to see why this is, and hopefully start the next week more determined.

On-line Resources

There are a number of useful on-line resources. If you do an internet search on online food diary you will get a list of websites which will provide you with an on-line food diary (I prefer a notebook, as one can record the information immediately, but realize that many people prefer the on-line versions). If you do an internet search on food diary form you will get a list of sites which have forms that you can print out. Depending on which website you go to, the form will cover just the basics (food type, quantity, time) while others will have room for additional information (your mood or activity at the time).