food diary.

[OutOutLetItAllOut]

everywhere i have looked it seems that keeping track of what you eat is VERY important to weight loss...
so im starting a little diary for myself.( hope im not stepping on toes)

monday.
B banana, strawbs, and youghurt
L porridge, apple
D pasta with tomato sauce, mushrooms, and onions, with a large salad.
2 litres of water
30 mins exercise dvd.

In order for my food diary to work i have to write ammounts in as well. eg. 4oz pasta and do a running calorie count. Boring but it works for me. Someone else suggested taking a photo of everything you eat and uploading onto computer at end of day.

this site comes highly recommended for logging your intake.

Good luck

Sorry to intrude on your diary, and I know you haven't actually asked for advice. I thought I'd share what works for me.

To make sure that I keep it up I have chosen a small and pretty notebook (very important to me that it is pretty ;)) and I keep it in handy at all times, in the kitchen on the worktop with a pen. dh is absolutely not allowed to touch the pen or use my notebook.

I used to use sparkpeople.com (very good site) but sometimes you just don't have the time to log on, when you're away you might not have the internet etc.

I have organised my diary notebook as follows:

• first page:

IT sates how many calories I should be aiming for per day and how it should be distributed. In my case: 1200 kcl: breakfast 400kcl, snack 100, lunch 300, snack 100 and dinner 300

• second page: weigh-ins (every first of the month)
• Then a few pages with guidelines of how many calories are in the foods that I eat the most. (I look them up online/at the back of the packets from time to time and add it on).

One page each for protein/dairy, pulses, carbs, fruit&veg

• followed by few pages blanks just in case (might put my measurements in there).
• followed by the food diary.

One page per day.
I write down everything I eat/drink and the bottom of each page is reserved for what exercise I have done that day.

I have found that keeping a diary really helps me being focussed, it helps resist the bad stuff, it's more "real" if it is written down.

Good luck!