One of the best ways to really keep your diet real is to keep a food diet. This is a truly excellent first step when it comes to figuring out and assessing exactly how you eat. A food diary may also be able to tell you why it is that you eat in the manner that you do, which often is one of the most important things for you to figure out when it comes to managing your weight on a long term basis.

One of the most important factors that should be involved in keeping a food diary that is effective is honesty. Studies have shown that women tend to fudge a bit when they are keeping their food records, and coming up short by as much as 1,000 was not unusual. Why should you go to all the trouble of keeping such a food diary if you are not going to be honest with yourself? Keep in mind that you are the only one that ever has to see your food diary, so there is absolutely no reason for you to be dishonest.

Here are some of the things that you are going to want to track when it comes to your food diary:

• The calories, fat grams, carb grams, protein grabs and fiber grams that you consume,
• Any danger zones that you may have,
• The underlying reasons behind why you are eating aside from real hunger,
• Your cravings and your appetite,
• The sizes of portions that you are consuming,
• How you feel after you eat

In order for you to track your calorie and fat intake, you are going to want to have a nutrient guide book on hand, or you could use an online foot database such as http://www.calorie-count.com to give you accurate nutritional information for the food that you eat.

You can use your computer, or you can use a simple old fashioned notebook to keep your food diary in. There are also commercial options that you can buy, and these are generally jam packed with information about eating healthy and losing weight in addition to providing you with well organized places to fill in all of your diet and nutritional information. If you do it by hand, just create columns for the food and any other nutrients and information that you are tracking. There really is no right or wrong way for you to do this - Keeping a food diary or food journal is really all about doing what feels comfortable for you and what allows you to be accountable to yourself when it comes to what you are eating, why you are eating and how you feel when you eat and after.

Photo Credits: Elaine Vigneault

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