The Write Way to Lose Weight

Research shows that people tend to overestimate the amount of exercise they do and underestimate the amount of food they eat. That’s why some people have a hard time losing weight even though they “hardly” eat and exercise “all the time”.

If this sounds familiar, the solution is to use the power of the pen. Keeping records of what you eat and how often you exercise has been proven effective. So effective that researchers found that people who were most consistent in writing down what they ate during the Christmas season lost an average of seven pounds while those who did not consistently write down what they ate gained approximately three pounds.

Food awareness.
Writing down what you eat serves two purposes. One, it makes you aware of what you are eating. A food diary can help you to clean up your daily diet of all those extras that you don’t need.

Every calorie that goes into your mouth is important if you are trying to lose weight. The small stuff (a cookie here, a bite of ice cream there) adds up quite quickly and is often “forgotten” when accounting for where all the day’s calories went to. Write down every single thing that goes into your mouth, no matter how small.

It is best to write down what you eat as soon as you do it. Don’t wait till the end of the day to write everything down. It may sound unbelievable but by that time you can already have “eating amnesia”.

Tell the truth. This is not a test that you pass or fail. There is no one that you are trying to impress.

The second purpose of a food diary is to make you aware of what you are not eating. Nutritionists say we need a minimum of five servings of fruits and vegetables daily. The ideal is 9 to10 servings. Many people don’t even eat the minimum.

If you have the opportunity, show the diary to a nutritionist. She can analyze whether your eating habits are nutritionally sound or not. You will find out if you are getting enough vitamins and minerals from your food.

Food and mood
One of the reasons that people gain weight is they eat when they are sad, mad, glad or scared. Boredom, stress and pressure at work or school are other triggers. If you want to find out if you are using food as an emotional crutch, write down what you are feeling when you eat. Also write down whether you are physically hungry. Keeping track of your moods and your actual hunger level gives you a clue to whether you are eating for physical or emotional reasons.

By becoming aware of your emotional dependence on food, you can develop other coping mechanisms to deal with your boredom or stress.

Exercise diary.
According to the American Council on Exercise’s Lifestyle & Weight Management Manual, many experts believe that record keeping is an invaluable component of an exercise and weight management program. People feel more responsible for their own program and don’t want to “ruin” their records by having empty days.

Keeping an exercise diary can be as simple as marking the days you exercise on a desk or wall calendar or as complicated as keeping a record of weight lifted, sets and repetitions.

Breaking a bad habit.
Habits are unconscious behavior patterns that have been ingrained into us by sheer repetition. That’s why they are so hard to stop. Monitoring your behavior by keeping a journal is a proven way to help break a bad habit or start a good one, according to Robert Epstein, psychology professor and author of “Pure Fitness: Body Meets Mind”.

Keeping a journal may sound like an overly simplistic answer to a complicated problem like a long-time bad habit but Epstein says that four decades of psychology research have proven self-monitoring to be highly effective.

For example, if you bite your nails, record exactly how many times a day you bite them. If you pull your hair, place the pulled hairs in an envelope and count them at the end of the day. Do the same with your cigarette butts if you are trying to stop smoking. If you say “you know” all the time, Epstein suggests counting how many times you say it by making a tear in a piece of paper in your pocket.

He says that monitoring your behavior will help you change your habit because it makes you realize what you are doing. You cannot change something that you are not even aware of doing in the first place.