Sometimes it can help to log your daily food intake. This allows you to see exactly how much and what you are eating each day and it makes you more accountable for your choices.
Research shows that logging your activities can lead to long term and sustainable behaviour change. A study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine reveals keeping a food diary can double your weight loss efforts. Switch from pen and paper to an app like MyFitnessPal and your chances of maintaining your new found behaviours increase even more.
This blog provides the top four reasons why:
1. Logging drives awareness
Did you know most people underestimate the exact amount of food that they eat every day because they fail to take into account portion size and thus total calories consumed. As a result we consume more than we think we do. Logging every meal and snack (even that late night cube of Dairy Milk) quickly drives awareness and puts things into perspective.
2. Logging keeps you accountable
The simple act of knowing that you are going to have to log everything you consume may make you think twice about a second helping of desert on a Sunday evening. In addition, apps like MyFitnessPal allow you to build a social community online, so friends can hold you even more accountable! MyFitnessPal members who share their food diary with friends lose twice as much weight as users who don’t.
3. Logging delivers “aha!” moments
Seeing the total number of calories consumed against your target calorie expenditure to meet your health and wellbeing goals can be a real eye opening. This is why we have put an Energy Balance card on your dashboards to give you a quick and simple estimation of your intake vs expenditure.
In addition by logging food you can start to implement simple food swaps. Brown Bread for White Bread for example. These are quick wins for you and more likely to be sustained in the long term. Food logging may even help highlight that one opportunity per week when you can afford to be naughty!
4. Logging tracks your progress
The longer you track your activity for, the more data you have to look back on. Being able to scroll through your diary entries proves you’re making progress. You can quickly see you how far you’ve come, which provides that added motivation to keep on going!
