If You Bite It, Write It!

This was the title of an article in my diabetes newsletter. I didn't actually read the article, but it reminded me of probably the single most effective tool when I was losing weight.

Write down everything you eat. Every bite, every lick. Everything.

I didn't start keeping a food log to make it into a food diary. I didn't want information about WHY I was eating as much as WHAT I was eating. Maybe it is just my nature but I wanted to see evidence that I could analyze.

I needed to see what I was really eating in a day. What food choices were costing me the most calories? Where could I make some positive changes?

I think keeping the log does more, though, than just give information. It keeps you conscious, engaged in the process. You start to really think about everything you consume. The hard part is all the little stuff. Maybe you lick the beaters when making a cake for your family. Or take little bites of cookie dough. Or grab a Hershey's kiss.

It isn't that these things are bad in and of themselves, but they do have calories and they do add up.

And they are sometimes hard to quantify.

For me, after a while of tracking everything I found that I would really stop to think - if I eat that I'll have to drag out my log and write it down, do I want it that bad? Answer became No a lot of times. Whatever that food was just simply lost its appeal at that point.

Helps those small calories go away.

It also started to show me where I was making smart choices. I wouldn't get upset if I was over on my calorie goal if it was due to a good thing - an extra serving of a high fiber cereal, or a glass of V8 Fusion, something that was positive for my health.

Unfortunately, it was also the second thing I stopped doing and probably need to start back up. The first thing was actually measuring servings. You get to where you think you are eyeballing it pretty well. Truth be told your "eyeball" starts to get a little bigger each time and pretty soon you're eating more than you intend.

Both of these slights on my part are easily remedied and will be resumed.

As I've said before, maintenance is tougher than losing. But the lessons learned are the same and it just has to be habits - like everything we do in life.