If you want to lose weight, create a food journal.
Food journals are at the heart of many commercial diet programs.
But you don't need to be on a specific plan to make one work for you.
A food journal is simply a notebook of some kind where you write down everything you put in your mouth each day.
Many people also record nutritional information such as calories, grams of fat, or grams of carbohydrates.
If you eat no calorie foods, you must record that as well.
Sugar free gum should even be noted.
Everything, including the water you drink, should be included in the journal.
Your journal can be as simple as a spiral notebook.
Some people choose to create their food journal in a special or distinctive journal they purchase.
Others keep their food journals on the computer.
The only really important thing about the journal is that you do not use it for anything other than recording what you eat and drink each day.
There are many benefits to keeping the food journal.
One of the most obvious is that it serves as a preventative measure to keep you from eating.
If you know that you'll have to record a snack, you will think twice about eating it.
But there are other advantages to creating a food journal.
For instance, when you hit a weight plateau, you can look through the journal to see if there are things holding you up.
You can also look for patterns such as increasing calorie consumption over a period of days.
You can look at patterns over a longer period of time too.
For instance, do you eat more every Saturday? If that's a pattern, you can devise a strategy to deal with the issue.
If you eat more around certain times in your menstrual cycle, a plan can be developed to help you deal with that as well.
If you are struggling to lose weight, I strongly advise you to create a food journal.