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Weight Loss Exercise

Keeping a Food Journal for Weight Loss Success

Food Journal

Food Journal

Many of the better, and most successful, weight loss programs either come with a food journal or recommend that you keep one. If you take out a few minutes each day to write down what you eat, when you eat it, how you’re feeling, and other information you may like to include, you can have significantly more success with your weight loss efforts than people who don’t keep a food journal.

Why to have a Food Journal

It’s not necessary to keep a food journal for the rest of your life. After a couple of months, you should have an idea of which foods keep you feeling better and more energized, and which foods cause you problems. You should also have fine-tuned which amounts satisfied you and when you ate too much and how it made you feel.

Here is a list of some of the things you may want to track in your food journal. Remember, no one is going to see this journal but you, so be accurate and honest. That is the only way you will benefit from what you record.

  1. What you ate and in what quantities
  2. Calories, grams of fat, grams of protein, grams of carbohydrates, fiber
  3. Were you really hungry or just craving something?
  4. What time of day did you eat?
  5. What were you doing that may have triggered your desire to eat?
  6. How did you feel right after you ate? Satisfied, over-full, still hungry?
  7. How did you feel about two hours after you ate?

There are many food journals online that you can download and use if you do not have a diet program that includes one. A spread sheet, like those you can make with Microsoft Excel are also good. You can create as many, or as few, columns as you wish and expand the columns to fit any notes you might like to include.

What You Can Learn From a Food Journal

If you are subject to “emotional” eating, or eating when you aren’t really hungry, it is important to identify why. What was the emotional experience you were going through when you felt you needed to eat? Did you enjoy the food, or just bolt it down? Maybe you were having bad feelings that you wanted to suppress, and food worked to “push” down the feelings.

The important thing here is to tie the emotional eating with a particular situation. Then, when you are not caught up in this emotion, calmly think of a way you can satisfy whatever situation the food was solving for you with a non-food response. You may be amazed at how much you mindlessly eat when you are in the throes of an emotion and not really hungry at all. But you won’t get these connections if you don’t keep track in a food journal.

Keeping a food journal is not hard to do and it will go a long way towards insuring your weight loss success.

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Step By Step Approach To Setting A Realistic Weight Loss Goal

A lot of people will say “I need to lose weight” but they do not know how much weight they really want to lose or how they are going to go about losing this weight. Having a plan and realistic goals can make a big difference in the success or failure of your weight loss plan. Most people do not know how to create a realistic weight loss goal though.

Weight loss goal setting is the first and most important step to losing weight. There is not a set method for setting weight loss goals, but there are some tips to make these goals more effective. These tips are easy to follow and are highly effective at creating realistic goals that can actually be achieved.

1. Determine how much weight you really want or need to lose in order to be healthy. Your medical professional can help you to determine how much weigh you need to lose. This will be done through a person’s BMI and body fat ratio.

2. Break this large goal into smaller goals. A good average to think of is a pound a week. This is a healthy amount of weight to lose in a short period of time and keep it off.

3. Write down your weight loss goals. This way the goals will be more solid and they can remain fresh in your mind. By writing them down, you can feel more accountable for the weight loss and less likely to cheat on these goals.

4. Write down how you plan to reach your weight loss goals. This can be through diet or exercise, but in general it is more effective to use a combination of exercise and dieting.

5. Focus on and celebrate the small weight loss goals, the 1 pound a week goals. This way you experience the joy success on a regular basis without the frustration of not completing the goals quickly. Be sure to celebrate the big goals with a bigger celebration than the small goals.

6. Review your weight loss goals on a regular basis. You may find that you need to change some of these goals based upon your changing body fat ratio and increased muscle mass. These changes can often indicate that you are further ahead than you think you are.

By taking this step by step approach to setting your weight loss goals and then completing them you have a higher chance for success. This can help you to become healthier and experience more energy. This can also improve your overall self confidence and self esteem as you complete the goals that you have set in front of yourself.

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10 Extra Smart Food Switching Tips for Weight Loss

One of the tricks to losing weight while still enjoying your favorite foods is to get rid of the extra calories in your favorite foods while still keeping the “comfort food” aspect. If you give it some thought, you will most likely find many ways to do this with your favorite recipes and cultural comfort foods – or even your favorite fast foods.

1. One big calorie savings for me was to buy an air popper for pop corn. You can, if you want, sprinkle it with something flavorful spice like chili powder or another favorite spice, or even a product like Molly McButter if you miss that buttery flavor. This switch is good when you want something savory and crunchy.

2. At Papa John’s Pizza, you can save 50 calories a slice by ordering the Thin Crust Pizza with Pepperoni (260 calories a slice) instead of the Original Crust Pizza with Pepperoni (310 calories a slice). Every little bit helps!

3. Chili’s Restaurants make a wonderful onion dish called the Awesome Blossom and serve it with an great sauce. But, even if you share it with three friends, the calorie count is very high. You would be better off getting an order of onion rings at a fast food joint to get that “onion” craving out of your system.

4. At Wendy’s if you want to save calories and are getting tired of always having to chose Chicken, you will be happy to know that you will save 300 calories if you order a Junior Cheeseburger instead of a Chicken Club Sandwich. That will be a big help when you’re looking’ for the beef!

5. At Quizno’s Subs, their Baja Chicken small sub with cheese and dressing weighs in at 490 calories whereas their Chicken Carbonara small sub gives you a calorie boost to 570 calories! A saving of 80 calories!

6. Craving cheese but think you must always give it up? Not so at Applebee’s. You can save 805 calories by eating their Tortilla Chicken Melt (from their Appetizer menu) instead of their Fiesta Lime Chicken.

7. At Auntie Anne’s Pretzels, if you go for an Original Pretzel at 370 calories you will save 80 calories over the Cinnamon Sugar Pretzel.

8. Back to Wendy’s! An easy way to save 250 calories is to have their Garden Sensations Caesar Chicken Salad instead of the Southwest Taco Salad.

9. At the world-famous White Castle, you can save 131 calories by swapping Mozzarella Cheese Sticks (169 calories) for their French Fries (300 calories). And, if you substitute the Double Bacon Cheeseburger (360 calories) with the Double White Castle burger (290 calories) you will save another 70 calories.

10. I love Del Taco, and there are wise choices that can be made here, too. For example, if you chose to have a 1/2 Pound Green Burrito (430 calories) you will save 620 calories over the Macho Combination Burrito (1030 calories)! Also, their fantastic Chicken Taco Del Carbon (170 calories) is a better choice than their Steak Taco Del Carbon (220 calories).

Don’t be afraid to eat out at your favorite food establishments, just order intelligently.

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