New Years’s Resolutions – Food Diary

Another year is history, and you have navigated your way through another Holiday Season.  While the holiday season can be a time for fun and frivolity, it can also be a stressful time full of rich food choices.  Thus we all look forward to a New Year with the ubiquitous Resolution, which more often than not involves diet and exercise.  This series of posts outlines some advice in making sure those Resolutions succeed,  and lead to a happy and healthy New Year.

Deciding to embark in a weight loss or exercise regime is a fine way to welcome in the New Year.  Unfortunately, statistics show that most among us will not hold true to our resolutions for even one month.  However, with knowledge and some planning you can make your resolutions come to fruition.

The key to any program is planning.  You would not start a business without drafting a business plan, so why would you attempt to lose weight and change your body without a plan?  The best means of tracking your progress is to create a food and exercise diary.

It is fairly simple to create a food and exercise diary.  First of all you will need a binder to hold all your information in one place.  Next, you can either use a spreadsheet program to create a chart, or look online for different charts or graphs to use depending on your preferences.  However, I would caution against using charts that are offered by independent companies or corporations, as often these are presented as a means of advertising and will steer you toward one particular type of food or exercise.  Instead, use charts published by either research organizations or government websites. Here are examples of a food diary and a menu planner I found on the website of the National Institutes of Health;

Menu Planner:

http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/public/heart/obesity/lose_wt/sampmenu.htm

Food Diary:

http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/public/heart/obesity/lose_wt/diary.htm

Although websites and forms such as the above are useful when you are starting out a new program, you will find that over time you will modify the forms to suit your particular goals.

There is only one rule to remember when filling out your food and exercise diary as time progresses, and that is to be honest!  No one, especially yourself, should expect you to be a saint when it comes to food.  We live in a world with ample sources of temptation, and even the best among can be guilty of straying from time to time with our diets.  Having a journal or diary to track such transgressions will give you a sense of accountability in your weight loss.

The best food diaries or journals are based on the concept of caloric intake.  Further articles in this series will explain how to measure and chart your caloric intake, but the basic idea is that 3500 calories represents one pound of weight loss.  Thus, if you were to reduce your caloric intake by 3500 calories per week (700 calories per day) you would lose one pound.  That might not seem like a lot of weight loss, however it represents 52 pounds over the course of a year!