Food Diary

Keep a record of your food menu!

"Dear Diary....."

While you're trying to lose weight, one of the smartest and simplest things you can do is to start and maintain a food diary. A food diary is just as it sounds a small notebook in which you record your daily food intake. Use a small notebook that you can keep with you at all times in a pocket or purse. You can keep track of a number of different things in your food diary or you can just keep it simple, but either way, keeping  a food menu is a really good way to help yourself stick to a weight loss plan. There are a number of pieces of information you can record in your food diary.

Daily Menu

Firstly, list your daily menu. This will help you to see and understand what you eat on any given day and give you the opportunity to notice any patterns of unhealthy eating that maybe you never considered before. You can also record calories, protein, fiber, fat, and other nutrients, but that starts to require more effort and the idea is to make it simple and easy to do to so that your chances of losing weight are enhanced not bogged down with detail.

Be sensible and do what you feel is right. If you start off with a basic food diary you can always add as you get more enthusiastic and see the weight dropping off! Portion size may be recorded as well.

List your reasons

If you really want to use the food diary format, you can also list the reasons you might be eating badly or well other than actual hunger, possibly any cravings you might experience, and your general feelings about your diet on any given day. It is probably better to write down that you feel like S*** and get it out of your system.

Equally if you feel great write it down and see if you can explain why. Then if you start having a s*** day look back in your diary and see what happened on the day you felt great and do that! It's your diary, so do what is right for you.

Keep what you find best 

When starting a food diary, remember that you don't have to keep a traditional diary by the bed with a "lock and key". You can use whatever kind of recording and writing tools you like best. For most people, the traditional diary, with room to write in! or just a plain notebook works just fine. Use your computer to keep your food menu if you want. get clever and set up a worksheet in Excel or similar (open office is FREE!) and record your food by the day and weight weekly.

You can keep your food menu on a laptop or notepad, or slip a notebook into your bag during the day whatever works best for your lifestyle. Remember in order to make this effective you need to update your food diary very day and review it at the end of each week in order to track your progress properly.

Diary Your Goals

You should always note in your food diary when you hit certain weight loss goals (and reward yourself) or when you gain weight you can scrutinize the results to find the cause. If you go to a gym you can show your diary to your trainer to make sure that you are staying healthy as well. Food diaries work great for many people, so you should consider starting one today in order to lose the most weight possible but remember KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) just do the minimum to make it effective at the beginning. The exercise thing should be fun also with your food diary and it will work for you, don't let it be a drudge.