Why a Food Diary is Important to Your Weight Loss Efforts- By: Josh R. Rhodes

Description : As an advocate of food diaries, I believe that the majority of people on a weight loss plan do not actually know the amount of food that they consume on a daily basis, or they underestimate significantly. Keeping a food diary is not difficult or tedious work as some people may think.

All you need to do is record the foods and beverages you consume within 30 minutes of doing it. Chances are if you wait until the end of the day to fill out the diary, you may forget some important things. Even if you just carry around a piece of paper in your pocket and write down what you eat, you can copy it into a notebook later in the day to keep it all together.

Food diaries give users the opportunity to objectively look at their diets and see why they aren't losing weight. You will have an honest view of your eating habits and will be able to point out certain relationships between you and the food you eat.

Many women tend to find a direct correlation between their emotions and eating habits. Food journals are a great way to help identify if you are an emotional eater and if that is what may be hindering your weight loss progress. It is helpful when you can see that between 7 - 8pm, when you are home watching television, you feel the need to eat something. We can attempt to fix this by changing the routine so during this time, you could go for a walk around the block and see if you are hungry when you get back. Chances are, you were emotional eating and a distraction was all that was necessary.

Using a food diary will help you to stop eating on a whim and naturally get you eating based on real hunger cues. Because you have to write everything down, cravings generally don't become an issue. You will learn to eat only when you are hungry, simply because you don't want to write down large quantities of unhealthy food choices. It is said that people who utilize food journals along with a weight loss program lost double the amount of weight than people who did not use the journals. The power of suggestion is right at your finger tips, but it's up to you to make happen.

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Author Resource : Josh has been writing for many years on topics that interest him. An example of one of his websites is http://osterblenderparts.org which provides information on the Oster Beehive Blender.