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There’s a simple, effective way to help you lose weight and eat more healthfully: track what
you eat. Here’s the scoop.
By logging your food intake it is possible to determine over time the composition and nutrient
quality of your dietary consumption. This allows you to compare your actual dietary intake—in the form of total calories, grams of food, and composition—with your goal dietary intake. Goal
setting is an important step towards more healthful eating and weight loss. By comparing your
actual intake with your goal intake you will begin to learn more about the composition and caloric
content of different foods as well as actual serving sizes. Over time it will become progressively
easier to meet your nutrient goals. Meeting goals is often a good motivator to keep you on
track.
People who consistently monitor their food consumption lose weight more steadily and keep it off
more successfully than those who don’t, according to recent research by Daniel Kirschenbaum,
Ph.D., of Chicago’s Center for Behavioral Medicine and Sports Psychology. He credited the
weight-loss success to the education and self-evaluation that is part of the food-logging process.
By tracking what they ate, journal keepers were able to identify the sources of empty calories and
mark when they typically resort to overeating.
It’s also important to be consistent in your food tracking. In another study, Kirschenbaum studied 57 men and women who were supposed to keep food journals—but only one group got reminders to do so. Eighty percent of those who were reminded to write down their daily intake actually did so, while only 57 percent of those who weren’t reminded actually logged their food intake. The folks who more consistently wrote down their daily caloric intakes lost a pound a week, while those who weren’t consistent gained a pound a week.
The bottom line is, what you eat at each meal is not as important as the nutrient content of your
diet over the whole day or whole week. For example, if you get a lot of carbohydrates with
breakfast in the form of bread and cereal, it is not as important to get as many carbs at dinner
when you sit down to have that extra-lean steak.
Ultimately, meeting your goals is the purpose of tracking what you eat. Eventually healthful
eating will become your way of life.
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Back to Healthy Eating |
In many ways, we’re not eating as well as we used to. Americans’ eating habits
have changed significantly over the past several decades, according to the National
Research Council. Protein consumption has remained about the same (12% of total calories),
but carbohydrate consumption has declined from 57% to 49%, and fat consumption has
increased from 33% to around 40%.
Carbohydrate consumption has declined because Americans now eat fewer grain products and
potatoes, and we love to subscribe to the latest fad diets, and many of these today are
low in carbohydrates. The U.S. dietary goals recommend a diet that is at least 60% to 65%
carbohydrates, around 15% protein, and less than 30% fat. This ensures a diet that consists
of a wide variety of foods; has plenty of grain products, vegetables, and fruits; is low
in fat; and is moderate in sugars, salt, and sodium. |
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