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Keeping Food Diary

Admin — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 21:15:27 GMT

This below is an article from a researcher from WebMD.

Keeping Food Diary Helps Lose Weight

It's All About Accountability and Awareness, Weight Loss Expert Says

Keeping a food diary may be a key to losing extra weight, a new study shows.

The study, published in the August edition of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, included 1,685 overweight or obese U.S. adults aged 25 and older.

For six months, they kept food diaries and were encouraged to eat a healthy diet and be physically active. They also met weekly in groups to share their food diaries and brush up on skills like how to judge portion size.

After six months, participants had shed almost 13 pounds, on average. The most powerful predictor of their weight loss was how many days per week they kept their food diary, says Victor Stevens, PhD, senior investigator at the Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research in Portland, Ore.

Those who kept food records six days a week -- jotting down everything they ate and drank on those days -- lost about twice as much weight as those who kept food records one day a week or less, Stevens tells WebMD.

Why Food Diaries Work

"I think the most powerful part is accountability and the next most powerful part is increasing awareness of where those extra calories are coming from," says Stevens.

Showing your food diary to someone else is even better, in terms of accountability; that's what participants in Stevens' study did. "You're accountable to yourself when you're writing it down and you're accountable to other people who are looking at your food record," says Stevens.

Food diaries can also help target areas for improvement. For instance, Stevens says a food diary might make someone realize that he or she is eating 1,000 calories at lunch and set a goal to trim lunches.

5 Tips for Keeping a Food Diary

Stevens offers this advice for keeping a food diary:

· Write as you go. Don't wait until the end of the day to record what you ate and drank. "We recommend they write it down as soon as they can after they eat," says Stevens.

· Focus on portion size. Practice at home with measuring cups, measuring spoons, or food scales. And be aware that people tend to underestimate how much food they're served.

· Use whatever type of food diary works for you. It doesn't matter whether you use scrap paper, a personal digital assistant (PDA), or a notebook. What matters is that you use it, says Stevens.

· Don't skip your indulgent days. "We encourage people to keep records especially on days when they're tempted to eat," says Stevens. "What gets measured tends to get changed."

· Cook at home. You'll have more control over what you consume, and you know what that food contains, and how much of it you're eating. That makes for a more detailed entry in your food diary.

Also, remember that even modest weight loss -- even if it doesn't bring you down to your ideal weight -- may have health benefits, says Stevens.

By Miranda Hitti
WebMD Health News

Reviewed by Louise Chang, MD

Is there anyone out there?

mymichelle237@gmail.com — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 00:23:15 GMT

Just wondering if I should give myself advice..I feel like Will Smith's character in I Am Legend....

Choosing the right food for your body type

Admin — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 22:13:10 GMT

Is the food you are eating the right food for your body type and so sabotaging your your success? To carb or not to carb? First you have to find out if you are allergic to carbs, seansitive or addicted to carbs.

We all react differently to different foods. These reactions to food are categorized as food allergies or sensitivity to food. Sometimes these reactions are pronounced other times they are subtle, this is especially with foods that make us gain weight or make it difficult for us to lose weight. Until you identify these foods, losing weight may not be easy and keeping the weight off to gain a permanent weight loss will be almost impossible.

This is also the reason why we overeat. When we are unable to stick to a diet, the same diet that others have succeeded with, we blame ourselves, not recognizing that it is not our fault, it is our physiology. When we have an understanding of how our bodies react to carbohydrate, we will be able to avoid the food items that are the culprit to our struggled. If it is difficult to understand, just avoid these food items like you will avoid them if you are allergic to them.

To eat carbs or not to eat carbs is not really a question of good carbs or bad carbs. It is good or bad to your body depending on how your body reacts to it. There are normal chemical reactions to all foods in the body like it is supposed to be. Tolerance to carb is also manifested in people at different degrees from normal, moderate to severe.

Take the test below and find out where you stand.

DNM Carbs Sensitivity Test

1. When I eat a breakfast with carbs like potatoes, breads, pastries, I’ll find it hard to control my eating the rest of the day.

2. I can go most of the day without eating, and then when I eat something with a carbs, I’ll be eating like I have a bottomless pit in my stomach.

3. Once I eat a meal with carbs like pasta, potatoes or deserts with sugar, I’ll be craving for more sweets.

4. I crave for carbohydrate snacks; cookies, candy bars, potato chips, pastries, I actually would rather have these snacks than have a good meal.

5. When I start eating a carb snack like cookies or chips, I’ll not rests till the snacks are gone, I do not have a regular eating habit, I might even go for more snacks sometimes.

6. I must eat till I am over full before I can stop eating

7. Food helps me go to sleep, sometimes I wake up to find something to eat in order to go back to sleep.

8. My comfort foods are high carbohydrate content snacks, like cookies, candy bars, pastries, varieties of baked goods.

9. After I eat a meal containing carbs, (like pasta, rice, potatoes) especially at lunch, I’ll be feeling drowsy.

10. I always want to snack, and most have a snack before going to bed, even if I just ate at a restaurant , a friend’s or at a party.

11. I have to eat something before going to a party or to a restaurant otherwise I can get really hungry while I am waiting for food to be served.

12. I’ll stuff myself with bread at the restaurant before my order is served.

13. I have to eat in between meals; I seem to be eating all the time.

14. I have difficulty losing my belly fat.

15. I have more energy when I eat meals that do not contain carbs.

Answer:

1. If you answered ‘no’ to all the questions, you have no problem with carbs but can still benefit from low glycemic index (GI) meals.

2. If you answered ‘yes’ to 1 or 2 questions, you have a mild problem

3. If you answered ‘yes’ to 3 or more questions, you have a moderate to severe sensitivity to carbs and would benefit from a low to no carbs meals.

DietNoMore.co meal plans are low carbs with low GI and would benefit everybody..