Keeping Track

By MAD21

I HIGHLY recommend keeping a food diary. To make it fun, get a pretty/cool/fun small (like 5x7) spiral notebook and a cool new pen. (Sounds ridiculous to some, but there’s nothing wrong with finding simple things to make this difficult challenge more fun.)

I have tried keeping track of several different nutrients at a time and found for myself, tracking only four different things has worked best. I track CALORIES, FAT, FIBER, and PROTEIN. I found that if these are within a good range, the others tend to be as well. If you try to track more all at once, it gets kind of arduous.

Sometimes I would find an article, or hear something on TV that talked about how we should eat certain amounts of something. For example, in my research I found that we should eat around 150-200g of carbs a day, so I wanted to see how many I ate a day. I kept track how much I ate for a few weeks, just to see what my regular intake was and compare. During this time, I also played around with eliminating a lot of carbs from my diet. But I found it very difficult to balance a low-carb diet, and keep the fat intake where it should be, considering most of the foods you can eat that are low in carbs, tend to be high in fat. In my opinion, it was more important to keep my fat intake under control. So I went back to keeping the average around the 150-200g mark, and it was comfortable for me.

Keep a separate notebook, or create a spread sheet to write down all of the nutritional info you find for the foods you eat. Keep it with your food diary so it’s handy. You’ll find that after about a month or two, it’s all you’ll need most of the time to keep track of things, since we all tend to eat the same things and at the same restaraunts.

I recommend trying to find servings sizes based on weight. I find the serving size is more accurate.

Buy a small scale that has a flat surface area. One that will do grams and ounces, and one that will allow you to zero out the weight, so if you want to weigh something in a bowl, you can put the bowl on it, zero it out, and then put the food into it to get the weight. I recommend Salter brand. They have pretty good quality and are reasonably priced. Here is the one I have. I love it.

You will know when you can stop doing the daily food diary (I suggest doing it every day for at least 4-6 months). Make a rule for yourself that you can’t stop because of laziness or frustration, but only because you feel comfortable being able to judge portion sizes and average calories for the day. If you find you aren’t losing anymore weight, or are gaining, just start recording in your food diary again to get you back on track. (This is also what you do once you are at your goal weight to keep you from gaining it all back.)