One of the best ways to keep on top of weight loss is to use a food diary to track your food on a daily basis. Keeping a food diary helps you identify specific food-choice related problems, and also lets you be realistic about what kind of diet plan works for you. A weight loss food diary is one of a number of important tools you need to be using if you want to maximize your chances of success.
What to keep track of
Your weight loss food diary should focus in on recording the foods you eat. That’s the main component of the food diary, and the one you need to be most meticulous about. Accordingly, on a daily basis, your food diary should record:
- The exact food you eat
- When you eat
- Details about the food you eat, including calories, fat grams, sodium, carbohydrates, protein and fiber
At a minimum, that’s what you’re going to track. However, there is more that you want to keep track of if you’re going to use your weight loss food diary for more than just record-keeping.
Watch for patterns
One of the most important things that your food diary is going to show you is patterns. Continue reading →
Perhaps the biggest obstacle to weight loss, for most folks, is the idea of overeating. Overeating in the most basic sense means taking in more calories in a given day than what you are going to burn. Overeating occurs for a number of reasons, most of which can simply be addressed through understanding some things about nutrition, portion size, and more.
Perhaps the biggest reason for overeating, however, is appetite. If you can control your appetite, you’ll find that your weight loss goals are much more readily achievable.
Here are a handful of things you can do to help control your appetite and to keep from overeating:
- Spread your calories out throughout the day. If you skimp during the day to save up your calories for later on in the day, you’re going to be hungrier when you get to that point later in the day. This is a perfect recipe to have overeating. Don’t skip any meals in order to have a bigger meal later on, because it will almost always backfire on you.
- Eat your breakfast. Your mom was right: breakfast is the most important meal of the day. By eating breakfast, you will keep your cravings under control throughout the day. Continue reading →
If you’ve ever started a weight loss program, you know that one of the most important things you can do is to get a handle on your food cravings. There are some things you can do to reduce the amount of food cravings you have, and there are things that you can do in response to those food cravings to make it more likely that you’ll meet your weight loss goals. Being able to identify ways to control your cravings is one important step in your weight loss journey.
Researchers aren’t entirely sure what’s behind our cravings. That being said, many experts do suspect that our cravings are physiological. Our bodies crave specific nutrients contained in the specific foods that we crave. So, for example, if you’re feeling low on energy, your body is likely to crave carbohydrates.
There are psychological aspects to cravings that can’t be denied, as well. Cravings can come as a part of food addiction, or as a response to emotional eating. The most important thing you can do in terms of controlling your cravings is to try to identify where yours come from.
Here are some things you can do to control your cravings and stay on track with your weight loss:
- Respond to cravings with acceptable foods. Just because you’re craving potato chips doesn’t mean Continue reading →
One of the biggest obstacles to weight loss, for many people, is this idea of emotional eating. Emotional eating is a common problem, both for men and for women. In the most basic sense, emotional eating means that you eat based on when your feelings or your emotions – rather than your body – tell you that it’s time to eat, or how much you should eat when it’s time.
To truly hit your weight loss goals, you need to get a grip on emotional eating. First, its important to identify the kinds of emotional eating that may take place. For some people, emotional eating means that they eat or overeat when they’re sad, depressed or even confused. For them, eating becomes a way to escape from their problems, and a way for them to avoid having to take any action to solve those same problems.
One of the biggest difficulties with emotional eating, and the reason that it’s so difficult for weight loss, is that emotional eaters rarely turn to healthy foods. If you were to grab a stick of celery each time you were to feel like eating because of your emotions, you’d probably be all right. Unfortunately, unless that celery is covered in peanut butter and chocolate, chances are that’s not the food you’re going to be grabbing. We like to eat sweet foods, greasy foods or salty foods when we’re emotionally eating.
Here are some of the common signs that you may be an emotional eater: Continue reading →
The Biggest Loser reality television show takes overweight Americans and puts them in a boot camp of sorts in order to help them lose weight. On this show you’ll see a lot of sweating and a lot of crying (maybe more crying than sweating). But the figures don’t lie, a former participant in the show was somehow able to lose 526 lbs. Here are some more crazy facts about this show. Continue reading →
Just because you’re focusing on your weight loss goals doesn’t mean you can’t eat out. While the documentary makers want to convince you that restaurants are trying to fatten you up, there are ways you can go out and eat at a restaurant without having to make bad choices and mess up your weight loss goals.
Here are a few tips on eating out and maintaining your weight loss goals:
- Plan ahead. Many restaurants now post their menus online, as well as their nutritional information. Even if they don’t have nutritional information, you can take note of the dishes you’re interested in and plan your caloric intake around them. The key is to watch out for portion size, because you won’t likely know until you arrive at the restaurant how big their portions are.
- Consider lunch portions. One way to address the portion issue is to ask if you can order a lunch portion. Some restaurants may not be thrilled about it, and some may actually ask you to pay the higher dinner rate. That’s fine, as long as they can bring you a smaller portion.
- Enjoy soups and salads. Soup and salad is a tasty way to keep weight loss in mind while eating out. The trick here is to stay away from high-calorie salad dressings, as well as soups that might be cream-based or otherwise high in calories. Oh, watch out for salads with fried chicken, or ones with heaping amounts of egg, bacon or cheese. Continue reading →
One of the common themes that you’ll hear from the most successful weight loss advocates is that you need to be able to create a brand new lifestyle for yourself, rather than going on a diet. Weight loss isn’t about temporarily starving yourself or beating up your body with exercise so that you can get skinny, only to pack back on the pounds. Weight loss is about changing your life, in many different ways, so as to be more healthy overall, live longer, be happier and, of course, lose weight as well.
Here are some principles you need to keep in mind if you intend to live the weight loss lifestyle:
- Fix your food attitude. Food is fuel for our bodies, first and foremost. You need to break out of the mindset that food can comfort you, or that you need to overindulge in order to enjoy a meal. It is possible, believe it or not, to celebrate good food and good tastes in moderation. For example, a slice of your favorite coconut creme pie might be 500 calories. A small sliver, however, might be 150 calories. You need to get out of the mindset that with food bigger is better, because it isn’t. You can enjoy quality without quantity.
- Exercise is imperative. You need physical activity to be healthy. Forgetting weight loss for a moment, remember that exercise helps your overall health in a number of ways, from stress reduction to lowering your risk for heart disease. On top of that, exercise is the best way to lose weight. You can only cut so many calories out of your diet when you’re trying to lose weight, but you can burn off many more calories by spending time in exercise. Continue reading →
Depending on your weight loss plan, chances are pretty good that you’re not wanting to blow the majority of your calories during your lunch hour. The fact is that there are a number of ways you can go about keeping your weight loss goals and still have an enjoyable lunch. Here are ten tips to keep in mind during your lunch break that will help you control calories and continue to strive for those important goals:
- Trade fast food for a deli. Your local deli probably doesn’t have a drive-thru, so it’s going to take a few more minutes to go get your lunch. Consider calling in your order ahead if you’re on a short lunch break.
- Drop the mayo. One of the best tricks for weight loss is identifying those foods that tend to be high in calories. Mayonnaise is one of those foods. Leave it off your sandwich (or anywhere else). Mustard is a more flavorful substitute condiment if you don’t want to eat a dry sandwich.
- Go grilled instead of fried. While you still need to check the actual nutrition information, chances are pretty good a grilled version of a sandwich (like chicken) is going to be at least 100 calories less than the fried version.
- Consider thin crust. Thin crust pizza can have as few as half of the calories of regular pizza. Stick with toppings that are low in fat and calories. Veggies are a wonderful choice. Continue reading →
When it comes to your eating habits, spending just a little bit of time can help you reap huge rewards of weight loss. A little bit of planning will go a long way. Eating deliberately – that is, eating specific foods at specific times all for the purpose of weight loss – is one of the shortest routes to weight loss success.
Here are some ways in which planning your meals, snacks and other food intake will have a huge impact on your overall weight loss efforts:
- Start by looking in your refrigerator. Take note of perishable items including fruits, veggies and lean protiens that are nearing the end of their shelf life. This in itself can help you with weight loss by prompting you to make better food choices. No one likes to throw away food that you originally bought while you were hoping to lose weight. The guilt you’ll have that comes from throwing away rotten veggies that you could have eaten instead of less healthy food will only make your weight loss harder. Avoid that guilt by daily checking the fridge and identifying healthy perishable items you can eat.
- Look around your pantry, as well. There are a number of different types of food you should see in there that are staples for weight loss. Pasta is one common weight loss staple. If you’re on a low-carb diet, you might have cans of tuna fish instead. Put these kinds of items on your weekly grocery shopping list, and don’t ever let yourself run out of them. If you do, you’ll be forced to eat something that’s not as good for you when you get hungry (or worse yet make a trip to the fast food drive thru).
- Plan out your meals. This isn’t always easy. It requires some real forethought. In addition, you need to Continue reading →
There are no truly effortless weight loss plans out there, regardless of what the advertisements might say. Weight loss requires some sacrifice, some planning, some exercise and a whole lot of knowledge. That said, there are some things that can give you a jump start on your weight loss if you’re willing to take the time to implement them.
Here are 7 shortcuts to weight loss that can jump-start your program and get you going on the right track:
- Labels are key. Just because a product says it’s “low fat” or “lite” or “diet” doesn’t mean it will work in your diet plan. You need to be able to count calories. You need to know what a serving size is. Comparing labels is an easy step in weight loss.
- Eat healthy snacks. By eating a small snack about every three hours, you’ll keep yourself from overeating at meals and you’ll keep your blood sugar levels stable. Eating a healthy, satisfying snack will help you at meal time. Good examples of this are an apple, or perhaps some reduced-fat cheese.
- Increase your intake of grains and produce. We just don’t get enough whole grains in our diets these days. Whole grains, along with fruits and veggies, give you more nutrients than just about any pre-packaged food out there on the market. They’re low in calories by nature, making them an instinctive weight loss choice.
- Don’t skip meals. One of the most direct paths to weight loss failure is skipping meals. Skipping meals makes you more likely to binge, and it can mess up your metabolism, which will also interfere with weight loss. Continue reading →
