Keeping a food diary may help you lose more weight, according to a new study by Kaiser Permanente\’s Center for Health Research. Participants who faithfully recorded their food intake lost between 13 to 20 pounds over six months, while those who did not have a food diary shed only an average of 9 pounds. After 20 weeks, the total average loss was about 13 pounds, Stevens said. 5 pounds.
And you can\’t fake that. The 1,700 participants also followed the heart-healthy DASH (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension) diet, attended weekly support meetings, and did moderate exercise for at least 30 minutes per day. \”Those who kept no food records lost about 9 pounds, and those who kept six or more per week lost about 18 pounds. Writing everything down brings us back to reality.
According to Victor Stevens, a Kaiser senior investigator, the food diary provides the dieter an awareness of what he is taking in, which could track the source of extra calories. Victor J. Stevens, a senior investigator at Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research, in Portland, Ore. In the study, which is in the August issue of theAmerican Journal of Preventive Medicine, they followed almost 1,700 men and women who were either overweight or obese.
That\’s a whopping difference. Those in the study who kept a daily log of what they ate lost twice as much weight as those who didn\’t keep records. Keeping a daily food diary will help overweight people lose twice as much weight as those who do not keep a record of what they ate, according to a study by the Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research. .
Keeping tabs on what you eat with a food diary can double your weight loss, a new study shows. The participants attended 20 weekly group meetings and were encouraged to eat about 500 fewer calories a day, to engage in moderate intensity physical activity 30 minutes or more a day, and to follow the low-fat, low-sodium DASH dietary plan, which emphasizes fruits, vegetables and low-fat dairy foods. But the food record habit predicted success. \”They handed in the food diaries, and we took a quick look.
\”It\’s not fun to write down what you eat; it just works,\” he said. \” Any chance they were fiction? Stevens doesn\’t think so. The food log also provides dieters with a good snapshot of their eating habits. While the idea of food diaries has been around a long time, this latest research offers more proof they help you shed more poundage, said study co-author Dr.
They have this idea that they\’re eating two or three slices of bread in a day and then they realize they\’re eating six. Researchers observed for two years 1,685 men and women who were battling the bulge. \”They also got on the scale every week at the meeting. \”What\’s the magic of a food diary? \”It makes you accountable to yourself,\” Stevens said.
\”The more food records they kept, the more they lost,\” he said. . Participants were asked to record daily food intake and their exercise minutes. The average weight was 212 pounds.
\”Writing down your intake yields clues about where the extra calories are coming from, Stevens explained, and participants said it got easier with time: \”The more I got into it, the easier it became to keep track of what I ate every day,\” Frank Bitzer, 64, a retired project manager for the computer industry who lost 26 pounds, told the study leaders. According to Sharon Meyes, a nutrition therapist at the Institute for Health and Healing of the California Pacific Medical Center, \”People are quite surprised by what they find.
Another option to track your progress is iScale an iPhone and iPod Touch application.
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–Derrek