Ready to Start a Food Diary? Use the KISS Principle

So, you're ready to start keeping a food diary. My advice? Feel free to use the KISS -- Keep It Simple, Sweetie! -- principle.

I did not. For my first food diary, I entered in all of my meals and snacks into an Excel template; then I entered my goals at the bottom. As the day progressed, I would type in my fat grams or calories (whatever I happened to be counting at the time!) and then I balanced it out with my goal as the day passed to see how I was doing.

Constantly adding up my totals made me very anxious. Instead of calmly assessing my intake at the end of the day, I got a little obsessive about it and checked it every few hours, figuring my totals up to the hundredth decimal place!

Now, if you have the skill and time to go all out, more power to you! You can still do your diary on the computer and not be as exact as I tried to be. No matter how you keep the diary, you should be honest. It won't do you any good if you fudge.

Find out what works for you: if charting your progress keeps you motivated, do it; if the easier the better, just use a simple notebook as described in the instructions below. It's all up to you!

Related Reading: How to Keep a Food Diary

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Food Diary? Check. Mood Diary? Try it!

Have you ever inhaled a bag of chips before a performance review at work? Or, polished off a tub of ice cream after a date didn't go very well? If so, then you're much like me and we have something in common: Emotional eating.

As I've mentioned before, not letting my feelings -- rather than hunger -- tell me when and what to eat (not to mention how much) has been something I've really struggled with. Not only does it completely derail my efforts to lose weight, but it's also been a crutch that allows me to not deal with my feelings head on and face situations I'd rather not deal with.

One of the most helpful things I ever did? Started keep a mood log. I've talked a lot about food diaries in my years as a weight loss Guide, but if truth be told my mood log has told me just as much (or more) about myself and my eating habits than my food diary.

If you've never tried to do this, I highly recommend it. It can be a simple entry in your regular food diary or you could keep an extra log. Write down a word describing your emotions before you eat, while you're eating, as soon as you finish, and a little later.

Use it for one important purpose: identifying which emotions lead you to overeat. Why? Once you've figured out your triggers, I guarantee you can come up with better ways to deal with the problems than eating.

More: Identify Your Eating Habits

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