Tip of the Week 2

And we're on the second installment of "Tip of the Week," eh? Well here we go.
This week's tip is pretty simple.

Track the food you eat.

When I started this whole journey, I didn't think this was an important element of the weight loss journey. I thought my only true problem was lack of exercise. With hope, I plunged into exercising only moderately aware of the things I was putting in my mouth.


After a week, I wanted to take my weight loss journey to the next level. However, I wasn't sure how. Even when the answer was staring me right in the face on Sparkpeople.com, I didn't think it would help me. Nor did I believe I would be able to commit to it.
Yet, I decided to try it. Just a few items a day at first to see how many calories or grams of fat were in the foods I was consuming. And then a few more, because I started finding out new things about my habits.

Now, I can proudly say I track everything I put in my mouth. I'm not extremely strict about getting every calorie down to the exact decimel. However, I do monitor my daily calories and nutrients, give or take 100 calories when comparing to what the food tracker tells me. I make sure to try and keep my calorie intake in my optimal zone for weight loss.

Also, when I track the foods I eat, I notice trends. For example, when I'm with friends, I am less likely to monitor what I'm putting in my mouth. I tend to go for another piece of pizza or a few chips. Not okay. I need to make myself aware and put up resistence.
That's not to say I don't indulge every now and again. But I am much more careful about it, and it makes me feel good about myself.
Whether you emotionally eat, eat out of boredom, or eat a trigger food that leads you to binge, there are things in your diet you may not even be noticing. Finding out these trends will help you to conquer the demons that prevent you from getting healthier.

There are so many ways to track what you eat. It's as simple as buying a tiny notebook and writing down what you have for breakfast, lunch, snack, and dinner. You don't even necessarily have to write down exact amounts, unless that may be significant.
You could discover that you tend to get really hungry between lunch and dinner, so you binge on snack crackers. By realizing your tendency, you can plan healthy, well-thought out snacks. Trade those greasy, salty snack crackers for a few apple slices with reduced-fat peanut butter and some air-popped popcorn.

If you prefer a more detailed method, there are hundreds of calorie/food trackers on the web.
Everyone knows my favorite is Sparkpeople.com's nutrition tracker. I love it, because they have over 10,000 foods in their database, and they help you shoot for your calorie intake goal every day.

Another great tracker I've heard of is on TheDailyPlate.com. It looks very detailed and with a large database. (418,000+ foods?!)

If you're looking to follow the government food pyramid (the new one, that is), then MyPyramidTracker.gov is for you. You can track the foods you eat, and you'll get individualized reports on what you're doing well, what you are doing all right, and what you could improve upon. I don't think its database is quite as large, if I remember. But you can easily find similar foods to get a basic idea of your habits.

Don't worry if you don't like any of those! Find your own method. Do research. Google for something you do like! There are many ways to do this, but you should if you're serious about losing weight and keeping it off. You can't just eat the bare minimum. You have to eat and eat right. It's the only way the weight won't rebound as soon as you start eating regularly again. (And we all do.)

Good luck!