Why you should keep a food diary: it helps you lose weight
A food diary is kept to keep track of the food consumed.
You can enter the names of the foods eaten, their quantity and calorie content, as well as your personal feelings (mood, feeling of satiety, etc.).
A review of 15 scientific studies found that keeping a food diary regularly helped people successfully lose weight and keep it off.
What other benefits does collecting information about your eating behavior provide?
First, a food diary helps you understand how much you actually eat.
We are not always able to determine the caloric content of food. The task only becomes more difficult as the portion increases. Thus, scientists were able to find out that the participants of the experiment are able to determine the caloric content of small dishes quite accurately, but allow an error of 350-450 calories if they are given solid portions.
Secondly, you start to notice caloric additions to your diet.
A snack in the form of a couple of sweets, a pack of chips eaten while watching a TV series, a salad with mayonnaise and a sauce for meat, as a rule, are not even considered food. For this reason, unlike full meals, they are not always taken into account when assessing nutrition. Thanks to the diary, you will understand how many calories are contained in such "additives" and will be able to exclude what is preventing your weight loss.
Third, you are given the opportunity to identify your emotional eating triggers.
Keeping a food diary allows you to identify when you are most likely to consume high-calorie foods and develop strategies to overcome this problem.
