Dear (food) diary

6 comments July 10th, 2008

Calling a pencil used to mark the scorecard the most effective club in a golf bag is a joke, of course, but that same pencil just might be one of the most important tools in weight loss.

Keeping a food diary has long been recognized as a way to form good eating habits or to control bad ones because everything that goes down the hatch also has to go down on paper.

Really conscientious food diary writers may even record the exact time that they ate something, why they ate it (not just “I was hungry”) and how eating it made them feel afterward.

Paying attention to this can help cut down on gratuitous extra helpings or mindless eating between meals, because you aren’t going to want to admit to it and write it down.

That leads to fewer calories, less wear and tear on the pencil and eventually less of you on the bathroom scale.

 In addition, you might want to track how many calories you do take in and how many you burn in your daily activities. Here are a couple of Web sites to help you do both:

To find out how many you take in try www.sparkpeople.com, which offers a free calorie calculator. It requires registration on the site and asks for your e-mail address to give you exercise and fitness and meal tips, including recipes. Or you can try www.myfooddiary.com. It also requires registration and asks for your name and age along with your e-mail address. You can join the site’s community for $9 a month.

For calculators of how many calories you burn, you can try www.webmd.com/content/tools/1/calc_calories.htm or www.dftools.ivillage.com/healthtools/calc_cb.cfm.