The 7 Biggest Benefits of a Food Diary (and Why You Lose Weight)

Cereal for breakfast, a cup of coffee at work, a sandwich for lunch, fruit in between and a helping of pasta in the evening… If you want to reach your ideal weight, you should be aware of what you are eating day in and day out. The best way to do this is to write down what you eat: both the small snacks between meals as well as the liquid calories – simply jot down EVERYTHING.

Lose weight with food tracking

Weight loss works best with food tracking apps you can use anytime, anywhere. Food tracking means keeping a record of all your food, meals and beverages, too. At first, it might seem to be a lot of work logging what you eat. But it’s worth it. A study from Kaiser Permanente’s Center for Health Research has shown that people who keep a food diary lose twice as much weight as those who don’t.

Here are 7 more reasons why you should keep a food diary:

1. Food tracking creates awareness

A piece of cake here, a bottle of soda there and a small snack in between: it’s sometimes hard to eat healthy on a busy schedule. At the end of the day, there’s usually not much time to reflect on all the food you ate throughout the day. But if you take the time to do it once, you’ll soon realize that you probably consumed way more calories than you wanted to.

2. Keeping a food diary makes you more accountable

If you want to lose weight, a food tracking app is the right choice for you: if you consistently keep track of everything, you might think twice next time before putting certain foods into your mouth 🙂

3. You learn more about your eating habits

Do you think your diet is 100% healthy? Are you eating enough fresh fruit and vegetables? And do pay attention to a balanced macronutrient ratio?
If you write down everything you eat during the day, you will quickly get a sense of what your diet is really made of: How much protein, carbohydrates and fat you are consuming. This information can help you change your diet to reach your goal.

4. Food tracking leads to “aha moments”

On the days when you track your food, you will experience numerous “aha moments”: before you started writing things down, maybe you weren’t aware of how many carbohydrates or how much fat you were eating per day.

5. You learn how many calories you should eat per day

Do you know how many calories you should be eating per day? If you want to lose weight, all you have to do is look at your food diary to find out where you can cut out the most calories with the least effort. Food tracking can also help you if you are looking to gain healthy weight: maybe you never stopped and asked yourself if you were eating enough calories.

6. A food diary shows your progress

The longer you track with your app, the more information you will have at your disposal. You can look at the entries for the last few days and weeks and see what is working well (and what isn’t). Have you lost a few kilos, perhaps? Keep track of the progress you make – it will help you stick with your healthy diet and reach your goal!

7. You feel fitter and full of energy

You will see – once you get a sense of which foods are healthy and good for you, you will feel better and above all fitter. And who wouldn’t like to have more energy through the day? 🙂

***