I have had the honor to watch several of my family members succeed with weight loss over the past year. They all increased their physical activity, and they all counted calories. Good ole’ fashioned writing everything down. Food journaling works!

There are a lot of tools to help you with food journaling. You may prefer logging online. There are several sites that allow you to do this such as www.sparkpeople.com and www.thedailyplate.com. On the other hand, you may prefer a notebook. In addition to looking at the label, www.calorieking.com is useful for looking up calorie amounts.

For those that know they can’t keep up, I may suggest keeping a journal 1 week out of the month, or even 1 week every 3-4 months. Even if weight loss is not your goal, food journaling can be a good time to reflect on your current habits. I have found value in doing this and am sometimes surprised with the results (hmm—I really haven’t had many vegetables this week---or wow-I have been eating out more than usual, etc.)

Food journaling can be timely and perhaps even annoying, but bottom line is it can be a very powerful tool to get results.