Keep a Log; Lose the Weight!

I’ve wrote about this before and even took shots at the idea one has to keep a food log to lose weight. While I think it is a good idea, I also think it is easy to eyeball the food one eats all the time and stay on the straight and narrow [path].

Well lets talk about that for a minute, is eyeballing food as good as keeping a food log? I used to think so but I’ve noticed over the last couple of years that my biggest weight loss has always come when I kept close track of every calorie.

In this post I’ll talk about the value of keeping a food log for a reduced calorie diet. I will point out when it is ok to “eyeball” food to stay on track and how I keep track of my calories.  Here is a video that talks about why and how counting calories work.

First off while I have endorsed a low-fat diet (I have a free e-book on this website), I now think the easiest way to lose and keep the weight off is with a sensible low calorie diet. It is as simple as the guy in the video states, first use the formula he suggests or an internet calculator such as this one here.

Find the information based on maintaining your weight, losing one pound a week and losing two pounds a week. For me it is:

• maintain per week           = 2500 calories
• lose 1 pound per week    = 2000 calories
• lose 2 pounds per week  = 1500 calories

Generally speaking a woman should eat no less then 1200 calories per week and a man should eat no less than 1500 calories per week. You see it is important to figure out how many calories it takes to maintain your weight so you can not eat more that that on average.

Now as I have already stated, I think you should devise a system of keeping track of your calories. I have heard there are great internet sites you can join and they will log your calories and perhaps make some really great looking reports. One can also just write down the daily counts in a journal or as I do – in an excel spread sheet.

Before I show my spread sheet I would like to mention that if you are doing an Atkins, South Beach, Mediterranean, Weight Watchers, low-fat or whatever – counting calories might not be too important. But you might be counting carbs, fat grams, points so keeping a journal might make just as much sense.

Ok I have been on a really long plateau (months) but I have finally made stead headway for the last two weeks all because I decided to keep track of the calories and fat. The fat counting is not to do a low-fat diet but to ensure I don’t do a high-fat diet. You see if I ate a high-fat diet I would end up getting very hungry because I would not be able to eat as much food (higher fat has more calories).

Here is how I count calories. I hope you find some way of keeping track of whatever you are counting that works for you too!

John's Food Log

I hope you have enjoyed this glimpse of what is working for me.