Dieting for Weight Loss? How Keeping a Food Journal Can Help

Are you dieting and looking for a really hot success tip?
Here goes: to lose fat, focus on the caloric deficit.
Maybe that's not what you were expecting.

But the point is, calories do count, despite all kinds of chicanery that attempts to persuade us otherwise.

The very human part of us that wants a quick fix or pixie-dust solution yearns to believe that somewhere there is a diet that will allow us to eat all the fried
chicken or ice cream or whatever (name your poison) we want "and still lose weight."

That's not gonna happen as long as we're subject to the laws of thermodynamics.

Of course, calories aren't everything. The quality of the food matters too. But without a caloric deficit, whether through food reduction or exercise or both, fat loss cannot occur.

The only way to know whether you're in a caloric deficit? Keep a food journal!
You see, research proves that keeping a food journal is one of the best possible strategies for fat loss.

It's not a sexy idea, and if people haven't done it, they think it's going to be too much trouble. It was a lot more trouble before so many cool web apps appeared to make it easy.

Now in just a couple of minutes a day, you can keep an online journal at tracker.dailyburn.com or with a Google spreadsheet or with any number of free online services.

In a recent study, published in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association, the researchers looked at the relationship between fat loss and keeping a food record.

They discovered that "keeping food records was a better predictor of weight loss than... baseline body mass index, exercise, and age."

And more more days that the study subjects kept their food journal, the greater their weight loss was.
Possibly you've heard or read the statement "What gets measured gets done," attributed to management guru Peter Drucker. What gets measured gets attention and focus--and the goals we focus on have a much greater chance of being accomplished.

There's ample research--not just the study cited above--that measuring and writing down food intake has a huge positive effect on a fat-loss program.

Most of us have no idea how much we're eating until we get really intentional about tracking it. Keeping a food journal makes it much harder to eat mindlessly. And the simple act of writing down our intake tends to encourage eating less.

So... if you're on a weight-loss diet, why not try tracking your food? That strategy alone will significantly increase your chances of success!

While we're on the subject of weight loss, I have a special gift for you: my hourlong mp3 audio titled The 10 Biggest Fat-Loss and Fitness Mistakes Even Smart Women Make (and How to Correct Them).
Grab your copy now ---it's FREE!

I'm Mary C. Weaver, CSCS, and I help women lose weight the safe and healthy way, speed up their metabolism, and reshape their body. I am a weight-loss and body-transformation coach and an NSCA Certified Strength & Conditioning Specialist.

Wishing you all the best of health and success!



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