Tip for Today #4

TRACK IT

This is by far-and-away every one's least favorite thing to do. It is also one of the more important aspects to taking control of your health. How do you know what all you need to change if you don't have a clear handle on what you're doing?

A lot of the experts recommend a food diary - how you felt when you ate, what might have triggered overeating and so on. I've always kept just a food log. What did I eat and how many calories did I consume. For me, it was an easy way to spot what foods were not really contributing and could be eliminated. It also made it easier to establish some routine meals and assist with planning (that's a whole other day!).

Since I was at first incredulous with what the scales said I weighed, my logging the food and calories was a way to prove that there had to be something wrong with me. I couldn't possibly be eating that much! But there it was - in black and white and on paper. And I once I started on my weight loss journey it became an very important tool. I learned that for my activity level (when I started) I could determine my day's needed calories by taking my ideal weight times 10. Basically, that put me around 1,250 calories a day. I needed to see where I could start cutting. I was eating less than 2,000 a day, but I was eating more than I needed.

How to do it is an individual choice. I tried Excel spreadsheets - looked nice but not convenient during the day or when I was traveling. I carried around a separate Day Timer - convenient, but cumbersome and I had to always look up stuff in a separate calorie book. Now I have a program on my BlackBerry. It has a built in food and exercise database to help with the input and I always have it with me (Billy thinks I'm addicted!). But it helps me see that if I've eaten too many calories then I have to up the exercise. My 1,250 calorie a day goal is a net number: food in minus the exercise.

I realize that no one wants to count calories. With the nutrition labels on all foods now it is a relatively simple process. And, like everything else, it became a habit. I give myself a bit of a break on the weekends from logging everything, but I also get a lot more exercise on the weekends.

I look at it this way. You wouldn't start off on a road trip to an unknown destination without a map would you? To make changes that will stick you need to be able to see not only where you're going, but where you've been.