A recent study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine shows that keeping a food diary may double your weight loss efforts. Researchers from Kaiser Permanente’s Center for Health Research kept tabs on 1,685 overweight and obese men and women, whose average weight was 212 pounds. The researchers asked participants to adhere to a reduced calorie diet, record their daily food intake and exercise minutes.
After 20 weeks, the average weight loss was 13 pounds per person. The also discovered that the more participants recorded what they ate the more weight they lost. Participants who did not record their food intake lost total of 9 pounds, while those who recorded their food intake 6 or more days per week lost 18 pounds.
If you ever doubted that keeping and diet and exercise journal can help you lose weight think again! By tracking food you become accountable and you may think twice about having that chocolate bar.