Eating, writing, adding can help you lose weight
By Alisa Stingley
Shreveport (La.) Times
Keeping a food journal — literally writing down everything you eat in a day — can be an enlightening way to whittle away pounds.
The "Outwit Your Weight Journal" offers these suggestions: • Record food intake every day; if you aren't that disciplined yet, keep the journal for a minimum of two weekdays and one weekend day a week. • Record what you eat as soon as you eat it. • Measure portion sizes, or at least guesstimate them. • Be honest. • Make an entry each time you eat.
"A lot of people eat unconsciously," says Amy Yates, clinical dietitian with the Willis-Knighton Medical Center's Diabetes and Nutrition Center in Shreveport, La. "Many times if you have a weight problem, you are not paying attention to what you are eating. The journal gives you something tangible to look back on."
Keeping a food journal is a popular health trend: A new book called "Outwit Your Weight" (Rodale Press, $24.95) has a companion book called the "Outwit Your Weight Journal" (Rodale Press, $9.95). The journal is a personalized weight-loss diary set up by registered dietitian Cathy Nonas, director of the VanItallie Center for Nutrition and Weight Management at New York City's St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Center.
The introduction to Nonas' journal says studies suggest that people who keep food journals lost more weight and kept it off. The book cited a study by the National Weight Control Registry of nearly 3,000 men and women who have lost at least 30 pounds and kept them off for at least one year. One of the common behaviors: keeping food journals.
Nonas' book includes six kinds of food journals. One is based on calorie-counting. Another, the "food-mood journal," asks you to record not only what you ate, but also how you felt so you can analyze emotional eating.
There also is the "portion-control journal," which charts how many servings of Food Pyramid groups you get each day. The "overeating journal" asks you to record only when you feel you've overeaten. There also is a journal for people who overeat in social situations, and a journal that helps you be more aware of physically being full. (There are three columns: "Stuffed," "Too Full" and "Comfortable."
The Outwit Your Weight Journal also has places where you can check off how much water you drink and what exercise (calories burned) you did in a day. The book also has a handy section listing the calories, fat and fiber in some 500 foods, and the number of calories burned for 250 exercises and activities.
But Yates says keeping a food journal doesn't have to be that detailed or complex.
"I start out by telling (patients) to get a little notebook and carry it in your pocket. I tell them, 'If you bite it, you write it.' Even gum. If you can put the times beside the different foods you eat, that's helpful," she says.
Write down how much you ate (note two tacos, not just "tacos"), and Yates also suggests writing down when you are stressed and the times when you ate in a restaurant. Many people don't realize how much they eat out, she said, and that can be a problem in restaurants where portion sizes often are double or triple what's recommended.
Once they continue to keep the journal, "they are amazed," Yates says. "They say, 'This is what I need.'"
And a food journal may be what they need for long-term success.
"Studies say that a person who loses weight and keeps it off five-plus years is a person who keeps a food journal even after they finish," Yates says. "I tell people it's their homework. It's the starting tool. That is them putting an effort toward getting better. I can't do it for them."
