Recommended by doctors and nutritionists to those who want to lose weight, the dietary diary has always been an excellent tool even simply for those who want to have the clearest ideas about their diet. Keeping an account of breakfasts, lunches and dinners not only helps you to have a realistic view of the quality and quantity of what we take in a day, but may also help us discover that we introduce more calories into food than we would need. That is why the food diary can help us to eliminate what is too much or simply to avoid unhealthy foods. We talk about this topic with Laura Maria Anna Carabelli, dietitian at Humanitas Medical Care Arese and Humanitas Mater Domini.
How a food diary works
Quality, quantity and schedules: This is the three information needed to build a DIY tool that will lead us to an awareness of the food style that most people pursue automatically and mostly unconsciously.
As soon as we plan to eat something, it is best to note it down immediately after and dedicate a period that, according to the experts, should include the meal at least 3 days a week. Keeping a database of what we eat and drink can in fact stimulate the awareness necessary to face any change. It is not enough, however, to mark what and when you eat. In order for the diary to be a complete tool, especially for the use of dietitians that will help us to redesign our relationship with food, it is necessary to mark above all the quantities.
The “too much” is almost always separate from the meal
If we are slightly overweight we will probably be surprised to see that we eat twice as much as what we’ll write before we start the food diary. According to experts at the Mayo Clinic, in fact, this tool statistically reveals that patients with weight problems have little awareness of the amount of calories they usually introduce.
One of the first secrets the food diary can reveal to us is that we must eliminate the habit of eating after or separately from the meal. Most of the excess calories are consumed after dinner, through snacks, that the body would not need and that no longer have the opportunity to be disposed of.
How to Build a Diary
The most important thing is to get into the habit of writing your own diary immediately after lunch, dinner or breakfast. You don’t have to wait too long: it’s easy to forget about some foods or minimize the quantities you eat.
If our goal is to lose weight, only after consulting a specialist who can follow us in this process of change and ensure that it is done in a manner that is correct for our health, we must register our diet at least 3 times a week. The foods consumed must be marked with all quantities, the order in which they were taken and the way in which they were prepared (cooking and condiments used). It is also important to record the time and place of the meal and its context, as well as its duration, and whether we ate it quickly or slowly. Finally, one useful piece of information to transcribe concerns our emotional state: did we eat the meal with a sense of guilt or in total tranquility? With appetite or forcibly? Did we feel full or did we get up from the table still feeling hungry? These answers, together with other information of a more practical nature, will also be fundamental for nutrition specialists who, in this way, will be able to have a complete a clinical picture as much as possible.
