Use a food diary to track what you eat during the day.
Now that you know where you stand weight-wise, it's time to introduce the concept of behavior modification that makes this program work: self-tracking. Simply put, self-tracking is keeping track of the actions that affect your weight — namely, your eating and exercise habits — by writing them down. In doing so, you have a record of your behavior over time.
It begins with keeping a food diary: a place to record all the foods you eat, how much you eat and when you eat, as well as a tally of the calories each item contributes. Be sure to leave space to jot down thoughts and feelings, which can clue you in to the thought patterns that contribute to your eating habits.
Be ready for a sobering experience. In the VTrim program, there are many highly educated, professional people who discover that they had no idea of how many calories they were eating in a typical day.
Start keeping a food diary today, and you're already on your way to losing weight. In fact, you might lose weight even if you make no other changes. How? Being more self-aware helps tip you off to behaviors (and calories) that contribute to weight gain, and helps you break bad habits. By writing something down, you become accountable for it, you have evidence of your behavior. That in itself is incredibly motivating for most people. It's not just about changing your food choices, it's about recognizing the behaviors that lead to problem food choices. Think of Pinocchio: he couldn't break the habit of lying, until each lie made his nose grow longer. With the evidence right under our noses, making better choices each day gets easier and easier. That's what keeping a food diary can do for you.
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The EatingWell Diet. Copyright 2007 by Eating Well, Inc. Published by The Countryman Press, P.O. Box 748, Woodstock, VT 05091. It is prohibited to copy, redistribute or transmit this work for any purpose, commercial or otherwise, without the express written permission of the publisher.
