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Diet Journal - How to Start Your Own Weight Loss Diary

Diet journal has helped many to lose weight and it can help you too. Learn how to start your own weight loss journal.

Why Do We Need Food Diary?

Weight loss is an ongoing battle for many women and men in our society. We all want to look slim, fit and attractive and do anything to make that happen.

Sometimes, however, we do tend to get irrational and jump on the next just discovered diet. Even though most of us already know that fad diets and diet pills do not work there are times when we get too desperate and try them too. But if you are reading this right now, chances are that none of those miracle diets or magic pills worked for you.

I am not going to discuss strengths and weaknesses of different weight loss techniques in this article. Instead I will try to offer you a solid way to get rid of those annoying extra pounds.

If you have not tried it I highly recommend you to start your own weight loss diary or diet journal. It can be a notebook or an online journal or weight loss diary where you write everything, and I mean everything related to your weigh loss.

You may wonder how this will help you to lose weight but what diet journal will give you is something that most weight loss plans lack – and it is an organization. Without organization and strict control it is extremely difficult if not impossible to achieve a weight loss goal.

You may know what is right and what is wrong for you to eat, and you may even have a good plan worked out in your head but keeping a track of your progress and seeing success is another different story. Weight loss diary will keep you motivated and help you to be in control of your own weight.

How to Create a Diet Journal

A good weight loss diary should consist of few parts. First you should write down your goal: how many pounds you want to lose and how long will that take. Check out my BMI calculator to figure that out if you haven’t yet.

Secondly you need to create a healthy weight loss plan. You may turn to a professional nutritionist to help you develop everyday healthy menu or you can do it yourself by learning the basics of healthy nutrition.

After that is done and you can begin to lose weight. The next step is to record your progress.

Write down everything you eat and drink every day. You will be surprised by how much stuff you do not realize you eat after reading your weight loss diet journal. This will definitely make you more aware of things that go into your stomach and help you to stop this annoying habit of unconscious and or emotional overeating.

It would also be helpful if you calculate the caloric food value for every day to make sure it stays at approximately the same number every day.

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Your caloric intake is not as important as the nutritional quality of food that you eat. Get into habit of having 3 main meals a day with 2 optional snacks in between and try to stay on the schedule. Avoid skipping meals. And more importantly avoid eating between your meals. If you do that soon you will notice that your body controls how much food you need without needing to count the calories. Do not overeat but make sure you feel full and satisfied after each meal.

Diet Journal - Exercise

Another great thing to put in your weight loss diary is your exercise plan. As I have mentioned before, you do not have to vigorously exercise every day to lose weight. As a matter of fact if you do not have healthy eating habits losing weight through exercise is almost impossible.

Just as an example, you need to run for 2 hours every day for a week to lose 2 pounds considering that you eat healthy. Are you up for this kind of a challenge?

But nonetheless, exercise is important as it speeds up your metabolism, maintains muscle tone and helps you body to restore to its healthy state. So I recommend exercising regularly, but being reasonable. It should feel like 80% fun and 20% work.

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