Evaluate your eating habits

If you have tried multiple diets and various practices to lose weight and have been unsuccessful in becoming the healthier you that you want to be, try a food diary:


• Keep a diary of the foods you eat, when you ate them, how you were feeling and what you were doing when you ate them. Review this diary after a few days or weeks to see if there are any patterns in your eating habits that may need changed to be a healthier you.

• Increased calorie intake can often time come from not realizing how much you eat throughout a day. Multiple studies show that 90% of people underestimate their calorie intake for a day. A diary will help you track and be more aware of how many calories you are taking in.

• Eating for our ancient ancestors was for survival purposes. While some people in the world and even here in the US, hunger is still an issue. But for most of us, hunger does not coincide with starvation and famine as those people experience. A diary will help you look at if you were just eating for true hunger reasons or other reasons.

• Some of those other reasons can be because eating is a social event or a psychological coping mechanism that some of us can easily fall trap too. Do you eat every time you turn the TV on? When you are upset or stressed about something do you always open a bag of chips or go for the chocolate? Every time you go to a restaurant do you order an appetizer, main course and dessert and eat it all, even if you’re full after the appetizer? A diary will help you notice if your eating habits are possibly due to these issues as compared to just needing the nutritional intake for health.

• Often times we may think we are eating healthy, only to review a diary of food intake and see 1 or 2 servings of fruits and vegetables and lots of processed foods and snacks with empty calories. A food diary will help you be more aware of the types of foods you are eating on a regular basis.

• After reviewing your eating habits pick one thing to change. It may take some time but with patience and persistence you can make a change toward a healthier you. After making the change stick, pick another habit to change. Eventually you will become the healthier you that you want to become.