4 Ways a Food Diary Can Help You Lose Weight

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It's important to keep track of what you eat but I can't spend my day measuring and recording. I found an alternative food diary at fitminder.com . It only takes a couple of minutes once a day. You still get many of the advantages of a food diary - accountability, the "Aha" factor, the track record - even if you don't count and measure every morsel.

Madeleine of CA 2:45PM July 08, 2008

Food diaries really help. I started one a month ago and have already lost five pounds - without dieting! It's about changing your lifestyle and making better food choices. It really is eye-opening to see how much you've been eating. Then it's no mystery why you were fat and also no mystery what you need to to do cut back and lose weight.
Plus, the online diary tracks exercise so it's like money in the bank. The more you work out, the more you can eat, and still lose weight.
myfooddiary.com is really great and it's half the price of weight watchers (which I also tried, but the points don't teach healthy eating and the points are too restrictive).
Diets don't work, but a healthy lifestyle does.

Calprof of CA 2:31PM July 08, 2008

Stop giving people nonsense advise on control food intake. No journal really is going help anyone diet. You are giving people excuses to try gimics.
It takes exercise to lose any significant weight for most individuals.

commonsense thinking of 2:10PM July 08, 2008

I've thought about using my website food-journals.com to do something like this Great article. Thanks for the info

Marcel of TN 2:04PM July 08, 2008

Weight Watchers Online Service is an awesome way to keep track of consumption for anyone who works/lives near a computer. It comes equipped with a menu-builder option that will give you rough nutritional values of your own recipes (in points --- points being a blend of calories, fat, and fiber).
It's really kind of neat, but not cheap at $12 or so a month. That said, I would never use an actual journal --- too much to carry around. And you can access this anywhere you have internet access. I'm pretty sure you can even set it to auto-fill meals that you alway eat (like your favorite breakfast cereal). Oh! and it already has a really large database of common foods (from grocery store items to chain restaurants).
Really quite neat!

Matt of NC 2:03PM July 08, 2008

I made a commitment in the Spring to really keep track of my food and drink intake. I use calorieking.com and also record all of my exercise. I am the healthiest I have ever been, I didn't really do it to lose weight but I lost about 10 lbs and have made real lifestyle changes and been excited to learn more about my health! I have good days and bad days but being that it is a lifestyle change overall I don't sweat the small stuff. If you take the time to do this you will change your life!!

Nicole of OH 2:03PM July 08, 2008

Another GREAT website is www.sparkpeople.com, and it is free.

Maribeth of PA 1:56PM July 08, 2008

I've lost 70 pounds this year and use a dietminder food journal to record everything I eat. I put down the amount, the calories and the carbs and then I total them each day. I also record my weight every day and graph my losses in the back of the journal. I also put down the exercise I do, both cardio and strength training. One of the ways it helps is that when I lose a lot of weight in a week, I can go back and see how I ate and exercised and repeat that pattern for better weight loss.

Karen S of CA 1:44PM July 08, 2008