Whether you call it slimming down, losing weight or dieting, all successful weight loss programs should include some sort of journal. Few of them do. If you don’t have a way to easily check what is working and what isn’t, you will have a difficult time.

Each body gets it’s extra weight from different sources. Before you can find the most successful weight loss programs to take it off, you have to know (from your journal) where it came from. Anything you can’t find a way to measure, can’t be improved.

Weight loss is a one-step-at-a-time process. To get healthy results that are fast and long lasting, we need to go back to the basics. In other words, we need to find out what we are doing wrong before we can change.

The smartest beginning step is…keeping a food journal - daily. It can be complex and filled with masses of details or you can keep it simple, clean and basic. By keeping track of your daily eating habits, your food journal will give you some pretty surprising insights and help you stick with whichever of the successful weight loss programs you decide to use.

Your food journal can record a whole host of valuable information. First, how about listing your daily food intake? Just this simple and basic step can provide you with a lot of unexpected data. It will help you to actually see what you eat on any given day - and you’ll start to notice patterns of unhealthy eating that you had never previously considered.

It’s our habits and daily patterns that make us succeed (or fail) in any aspect of our lives. We habitually do things without even noticing. Your good as well as your bad habits and patterns will quickly emerge once you begin writing everything down in your food journal. After your habits have been exposed, it’s a simple matter to find the successful weight loss programs to counteract them.

Many food journals include portion sizes, protein, fiber, fat, calories and other nutrients. It IS a lot of work but it’s valuable information and definitely worth the time and extra effort. It won’t be long before humongous mistakes start to appear. What, why, when and how much you eat will start to take on a whole new meaning.

If you want to make it more of a diary type format, you could include your inner feelings about your weight loss efforts. How your program is affecting you on a daily basis. What triggers make you have cravings or make you want to eat for reasons other than hunger. The bottom line is, there are many formats you could follow, but keep in mind, the journal is yours and only for you. You can record anything YOU find useful.

You don’t have to worry about keeping your food journal under lock and key or hidden away like a traditional diary. Reading a list of what you eat every day is not something that anyone is likely to want to do. It’s not what anyone would consider tabloid fodder. (Unless your life IS featured in the tabloids. In that case, hide it away.)

In the actual creation of your journal, use whatever tools work best for you. You don’t need to go out and buy some fancy leather bound journal. (Unless that’s what you WANT.) A simple pad of paper and a pencil will work just fine. You could even keep your journal on your computer. Just fire up your word processing program or an Excel type spreadsheet and keep the icon on your desktop for easy access.

Your food journal could be kept in a laptop, palm pilot, voice recorder or even a simple little notebook you slip into your purse or pocket. Whatever your lifestyle demands. The point is to DO IT and keep it up daily.

Keeping up with your journaling (and reviewing it every week) is the key to keeping track of your progress and finding the reasons for when you get off track. As a weight loss tool, your journal is far more valuable than your scale could ever be.

Reaching specific goals and milestones deserves a reward. Give yourself an “ATTABOY” or “ATTAGIRL”. No, don’t celebrate with a tub of ice cream. This may seem hokey, but go out and buy some of those gold star stickers that the first graders like so much. Whenever you deserve a reward, put one in your journal. Believe it or not, seeing all those gold stars can be pretty motivating and they’ll become very important to you. They aren’t fattening, either.

If you back slide, study your journal and find out what went wrong! It’s all there! You can fix your mistakes and move on to the next gold star.

The next time you go to your doctor for a physical, take along your journal. Let them see it and offer any helpful suggestions. They can help to make sure that what you are doing is not only working, but is healthy. Always check with your doctor before beginning any weight loss or exercise program.

It’s a little extra work, but a food journal works wonders for most of the people who keep one. Consider starting yours today- it’s the best method for finding quick ways to lose weight!

Tags: Obesity

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