A nibble of this, a bite of that. Just a small glass of wine, or a few handfuls of potato chips. What’s the big deal, how many calories can that add up to anyway? Well, a lot, especially if you are trying to lose weight. When it comes to losing weight, it’s best to be totally honest with yourself, and with your food tracking app.
Why You Should Track Your Food
Tracking what you eat could be your most important component to losing weight. Tracking your food has been shown to be a solid predictor of permanant weight loss. What is tracking? Tracking doesn’t just mean estimating what you have eaten and scribbling it down. Tracking means doing some detective work on you. Recording not only what you ate, but how much, what time of day, where you ate, with whom, how you were feeling at the time, what else you were doing while eating, and whatever insights might come up that you feel are important. You can also track your successes and things that worked for you, such as strategies you used at you last party that prevented you from trying one of everything at the buffet table.
Why is Tracking Your Food Key to Weight Loss?
You’ve made the decision to lose weight. What’s the next step? When I meet with clients I always ask them for at least a few days of a food journal. Tracking for me is especially important because I can see where you can make changes quickly. It gives us something to start with.
Tracking also has other benefits. For you, tracking your food:
helps build awareness and highlights hidden patterns and habits you might have. That daily trip to Starbucks for a latte and muffin, or nightly dessert might have gone unnoticed. Food journaling is a tool to help you find hidden clues and to help you understand where you can make some simple changes in your day.
get’s you to understand portions and what they are worth calorically. You then can make adjustments in the amount of food or exercise you need. It helps to educate you about food, what you can eat more of and what you can be more mindful of.
helps you to understand why you might be hungry every afternoon at 3pm, or why you still feel the need to eat right after dinner. Food tracking can give clues to your energy levels and health by understanding the relation to food and healing.
The Best Ways to Track Your Food
There’s an app for everything these days and food and exercise tracking is no exception. You can always defer to old fashioned pen and paper and I’m a big fan of writing down the details, including how you were feeling before and after you ate. Splurge on a nice journal and share your deepest thoughts with no one but you. However, I understand the convenience of a phone based app. Here are a few of my favorites.
The Best Food Diary Apps
Here are a few of my favorite apps to track your food. All of them have free plans so it costs nothing to try them out.
LoseIt!My Fitness Pal
My Net Diary
Do you want to know more about the benefits of tracking your calories for weight loss and health? Let’s talk! Reach out to me HERE and set up a time for a free Ditch the Diet, Lose the Weight Discovery Session.
