How to lose weight: Stage 3. Working with a food diary

Nutritionists say: people who keep a weight loss diary lose weight faster. Want quick results? Find out what a weight loss diary is, what it can be and how it can help you get slim!

Author: Kristina Lobanovskaya, doctor, practicing nutritionist Article updated: 11/09/2020

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Success in the fight against excess weight is determined by two components - physical activity and proper nutrition. Moreover, the second aspect is of decisive importance, because you can train to the point of exhaustion, but if you continue to uncontrollably overeat high-calorie foods, then any efforts will be in vain. Although without physical activity, the results of the diet will be less pronounced. A powerful tool for creating motivation and achieving better performance in sports is a daily training plan that makes it easier to achieve your goals. The same benefit comes from a food diary, which helps you evaluate your eating behavior and easily correct it. Therefore, in the process of losing weight, nutritionists recommend keeping both records, combining them into one common weight loss diary.

Why is it needed?

Modern man differs from prehistoric man in that he moves much less and eats often, even when he is not hungry. Today, food is consumed not only to provide the body with the necessary energy, but also simply for company or because “the time has come,” as well as out of grief, stress or joy, to experience new taste sensations or because there is nothing to do. At the same time, most people do not pay attention to the quality and quantity of the products they consume, unless, of course, there are strict restrictions for health reasons or a great desire to bring their weight back to normal. But even in these cases, it is quite difficult to constantly monitor the composition and volume of what you eat, since it is almost impossible to remember everything that goes into your mouth throughout the day. Keeping a food diary helps not only solve this problem, but also analyze your diet and take measures to correct it.

Important! The breakdown of fat deposits in the body begins only when there is an energy deficit, so during a diet it is necessary to take into account the amount of both consumed and expended calories. To do this, in a weight loss diary, along with nutrition data, it is necessary to record information about physical activity and other factors affecting health and figure.

In fact, this is the difference between a regular food diary and a weight loss diary. The first takes into account only the food eaten per day, and the second takes into account almost everything related to energy metabolism in the human body, including the amount of food, physical activity, rest, sleep and even emotions. The benefit of keeping such records is due to the fact that the more attention is paid to what a person puts into his body, the easier it is for him to give up unhealthy eating habits and other bad habits.

Studies have shown that this approach to the weight loss process not only helps to normalize body weight, but changes your attitude towards everything that can affect your well-being and appearance. In general, the reasons for starting to keep a weight loss diary can be combined into the following list:

The exact number of calories consumed per day will become known. As a rule, the actual calorie content of the daily diet is much higher than it seems, especially if meals occur outside the home. Therefore, you need to stop guessing and start counting what you consume per day.
It will be possible to give up unnecessary snacks. After analyzing the list of foods consumed during the day, it will be possible to exclude unnecessary items from the diet, for example, nuts eaten on the way to work or candy eaten while hanging out with colleagues.
The choice of products will become conscious and more meaningful. So, instead of the usual cappuccino, which contains 320 kcal, you can switch to natural coffee, which contains virtually no calories. After all, it is precisely such minor excesses in food that lead to the appearance of 5-6 extra pounds per year!
Mistakes in choosing a diet and the reasons for gaining excess weight will be identified. To overcome the craving for overeating, nutritionists recommend recording not only the food consumed, but the circumstances that usually provoke you to eat too much. For example, in the office there is a machine with nuts and chips, and on the way home there is a favorite cafe that sells ice cream. Having traced such a connection, you can break it if you take healthy snacks to work and choose a different route to home. Also, if you have a habit of eating stress, then when you feel nervous tension you should go not to the kitchen, but, for example, to the bathroom or for a walk.
It will be possible to count all physical activity, including walking, housework and other activities, not just those spent in the gym. Knowing the total number of calories consumed per day will allow you to calculate the energy value of food to properly create a menu for the day, week or even month, as well as adjust your diet so that weight loss is as effective as possible and without compromising your health.
The results achieved will become more obvious and will create additional motivation to continue what has been started. A weight loss diary will help you track your dynamics by comparing the number of kilograms lost in the past and this month, as well as correct mistakes by identifying the products that most effectively influence weight change, etc.
There will be a reason to reward yourself for endurance and patience. If you haven’t eaten a single harmful product for a month, you can arrange a holiday for yourself and eat something forbidden.

Keeping a weight loss diary may seem difficult only at first. Very quickly this will become a habit, and to determine the calorie content or weight of a portion of most dishes you will no longer need to use a table and a calculator, since they will be easily remembered. The most important thing is to regularly make notes and be sure to draw conclusions by analyzing the data received.

Getting started with FatSecret - determining the RSC

After the standard registration procedure and e-mail verification, you find yourself in the preparatory section of the service called “Quick Start”. Here you enter your data - height and weight, indicate the level of daily activity and choose your goal - weight gain, weight maintenance or weight loss, and also indicate the desired weight in kilograms.

Based on this information, FatSecret tries to calculate your Recommended Daily Calorie Allowance (RDA), and if you want to lose weight, your goal is to stay within it.

To be honest, I don’t understand how FatSecret considers RSC. I tried several options, and came to the conclusion that the higher the indicated weight, the greater the deviation in the direction of increase in the RSC. Minor, but a deviation.

For example, for a person weighing 120 kg, goal 80 kg and age 30 years, FatSecret sets the norm for weight loss at 3000 kcal/day.

Moreover, according to the generally accepted Harris-Benedict formula, to calculate the RBC for safe weight loss, you already need 2900 kcal/day.

If you are not extremely overweight, then, in principle, you can ignore this and do as FatSecret suggests.

Fortunately, you can specify the RSC value manually, and I advise you to calculate your current RSC using a calculator and subtract 10% from the resulting value (but not less than 1000 kcal in the remainder), thereby obtaining your healthy weight loss RSC.

Design options

There are several methods for creating a weight loss diary. Their essence is the same, and the difference is only in ease of use and accessibility.

On paper

Using a notepad or notebook to keep notes is considered outdated and not relevant in the world of modern technology. But this method deserves attention because it has several important advantages over the others. The advantages of paper media include the following factors:

speed of entry, the ability to make notes at any time and anywhere after each meal, as well as use your own abbreviations, enter additional data and various notes “in the margins”;
no recharging or connection to the network, constant readiness for use, impossibility of breakdown;
saving entered data for many years.

The only disadvantage of this method is the lack of special tables at hand to determine the calorie content and amount of BJU in products. Therefore, you will either need to print them out and carry them with you, or enter only primary data, and then calculate the specified parameters on a computer. The second method is more convenient, since it eliminates the use of rather voluminous tables and a calculator necessary for the calculation.

In computer

Previously, there were special diary programs that were downloaded and installed on the computer. Today they have lost their relevance and are not supported by the latest versions of operating systems. This is due to the availability of free access to the Internet and the ability to perform such actions online.

However, many PC users prefer to keep various records, including a weight loss diary, using spreadsheets in MS Excel. They allow you to set your own formulas for calculating the calorie content and nutritional value of foods or dishes according to their weight, as well as calculate the total amount at the end of the day.

The disadvantages of this method include:

the need to refer to calorie tables and dietary supplements;
inability to make regular notes and bring in the slightest snacks, since the computer cannot be carried with you;
the possibility of losing entered data in the event of a PC failure.

Thus, the use of this method will have to be combined with recording primary data on paper. If you rely only on your own memory, much of what needs to be taken into account during the day will be lost.

On the website online

A huge number of sites dedicated to proper nutrition or weight loss today provide the opportunity to keep a weight loss diary online. However, you must be very careful when choosing such resources, since many of them offer very limited functions that do not allow you to take into account all the necessary data.

Also, the disadvantages of this option for keeping a weight loss diary include:

disadvantages of using the above spreadsheets in terms of the inability to make regular entries and enter the slightest snacks if the mobile phone does not have the Internet or there is no Internet connection;
unintended saving of record history on some sites where data is entered only for 1 day;
the possibility of losing the entered data if the site is blocked or another reason for stopping its operation.

In addition, it should be taken into account that the weight loss diary has a slightly different filling scheme than the food diary, a sample of which is most often found on such services.

In the mobile application

Smartphone owners are offered many special applications for keeping a weight loss diary. This method has the greatest number of advantages, including:

quick calculation of the calorie content and quantity of BJU in a product by its volume or weight (in automatic mode), as well as calculation of the total amount of calories and BJU consumed per day;
saving entered data in history;
the ability to enter information at any moment thanks to the constant presence of the gadget at hand.

In addition, most mobile weight loss diaries provide a number of additional features, such as:

determination of the individual calorie norm and BJU according to the specified criteria (age, weight, height, usual lifestyle);
calculation of the required amount of water drunk per day and a separate section for its accounting;
calculation of body mass index based on entered personal parameters;
drawing up graphs and diagrams for visual monitoring of calorie and dietary nutritional intake.

The disadvantages of using most of these applications include:

a limited number of dishes in the library, which does not always allow you to determine the calorie content of the menu (some programs offer you to enter them into the database yourself);
inability to enter data about training, emotions and other additional notes;
most of these services only work when connected to the Internet, which is not always possible;
If the battery is discharged or overheated, the smartphone will turn off and making entries will become unavailable.

Despite a number of shortcomings, today mobile applications are considered the most convenient for keeping a weight loss diary.

Why is it convenient to count calories in FatSecret?

Until recently, counting calories was perceived as a difficult and thankless task. Well, of course - you need to estimate how much of what food is on your plate and determine its calorie content from the label or reference book, and, preferably, without errors. And write all this down in a notebook. The more different foods you eat, the more you have to count, and unless you have an iron will, you will quickly give up counting calories “manually.”

I also tried to count calories using tables and a notepad and, once I got the hang of it, I spent about half an hour a day on it. Fortunately, I had enough free time for training and calculations, and gradually I got used to it. Then a friend showed me how to count calories using Excel tables. We put popular dishes in there, wrote several formulas and got a simple calorie calculator. However, this did not eliminate the need to transfer all the values into a notepad - what came out in Excel was terribly unclear. The time it takes to count calories has been halved.

When I had a stable Internet connection, I began to look for more convenient tools and came across the American fitness tracker MyFitnessPal. Finally, a tool was found that solved all problems at once: it had a ready-made database of dishes and products indicating the composition and calorie content, the ability to keep a food diary and take into account not only the intake of calories from food, but also their consumption from training. Everything would be fine, but at that time MFP had two significant drawbacks: there was no normal version in Russian, and there were few Russian products in the database. Now the situation has changed, and in many aspects MyFintessPal now looks more interesting than FatSecret. But FatSecret is much simpler.

I used MFP for about three years until I found a much better solution - FatSecret Russia , the Russian-language version of the fitness tracker FatSecret, .

How to lead

Regardless of the form option you choose, keep in mind that it is not as important as the content. Therefore, before you start filling out a weight loss diary, you need to carefully consider its design. If this is a self-compiled table in paper or electronic form, then it is enough to simply enter the necessary columns and lines into it, and then fill them out in a timely manner. When choosing a mobile application to download or a website to work online, you should give preference to those that will best comply with the recommendations below.

Entering data

Making entries in a weight loss diary is not as difficult and boring as it seems at first glance. But before you start such a diary, you need to understand how to correctly reflect all the necessary information when entering data. To do this, you need to familiarize yourself with some important rules and recommendations:

All consumed products and dishes are recorded without fail and written in a column indicating the quantity (in grams, since the calculation is carried out in them), calorie content (kcal), content of proteins, fats and carbohydrates.
If records are kept in a mobile application or online on a website, then there should be information about the energy and nutritional value of the products. When using a notepad or spreadsheet on a computer for these purposes, such data can be found on the Internet and saved in bookmarks, downloaded or printed.
It is advisable to indicate the time of meals, which will help determine their frequency and diet in general.
The mass of any food is determined using scales, measuring cups or other containers whose volume is precisely known. This will help you correctly reflect the amount you eat per day. You cannot determine your weight approximately (“by eye”), as this will negate the whole point of keeping a weight loss diary.
You can roughly estimate the serving size only when visiting a restaurant or other catering establishments, but only if this happens quite rarely. If you constantly eat outside the home, you need to find ways to solve this problem (search on the Internet for descriptions of the dishes you eat, indicating the composition and calorie content, or ask a chef for help).
Entries are made after every meal, snack, and even accidental consumption of food. If you do this in the evening, it will be difficult to remember everything that was eaten during the day, and the amounts of calories and dietary fat will not correspond to reality, which will also make keeping a weight loss diary pointless.
Not only food, but also drinks are recorded. The volume of water drunk is taken into account separately, which will determine whether enough fluid is consumed to maintain water balance in the body.
All physical activity is recorded, including home exercises, training in the gym, doing housework, walking and any other physical activity. In this case, everything that was performed must be described as accurately as possible. In addition, the number of calories burned and the effect of a particular load on appetite, food choice, and emotional state are indicated.
At the end of each day, intermediate results are compiled - how much excess weight was lost (or gained), how many calories were received and how much was consumed. This will help you plan your diet and exercise for the next day.

All entries must be made daily and strictly according to the specified rules. Otherwise, you will never be able to achieve the goals that were set at the beginning of keeping a weight loss diary.

Additionally, some other information should be noted that will be very useful when conducting analysis to correct eating behavior. For this purpose, it is recommended to indicate:

sensations 15–20 minutes after consuming each product or dish, including well-being and the rate of satisfaction of hunger (the appearance of a feeling of fullness);
feelings and mood before each meal to determine the presence or absence of a tendency to overeat due to emotions, as well as the food that is preferred at such moments - sweet, fatty or other;
the degree of hunger before and after eating to compare the amount eaten in cases where the body was really hungry and when there was no strong desire to eat.

All this information will help identify and correct errors, significantly accelerating progress towards the goal. In addition, a weight loss diary can be very effectively used to control financial expenses if you add another column to the specified data and record the cost of products in it. This will significantly save the family budget by refusing those purchases that harm both your figure and your wallet.

Information analysis

To get the most out of a weight loss diary, it is critical to know not only how to write your daily entries, but also how to use them in the future. Entering data is only half the battle, since it must be systematically analyzed and based on the results obtained, nutrition and lifestyle adjustments can be made.

Attention! A brief analysis should be carried out when summing up interim results at the end of each day in order to slightly adjust the diet and slightly change physical activity. If you do this daily, then with the help of such small steps you can easily and without stress for the body achieve the desired weight.

For a more detailed analysis of the information entered in the weight loss diary, it is necessary to determine:

Caloric content of the daily diet and the ratio of incoming and expended calories. Increasing your energy deficit by 500 kcal/day will allow you to lose 0.5–1 kg of excess weight per week. This can be achieved by reducing the energy value of food or increasing the level of physical activity.
Dietary patterns that require correction. To do this, you need to establish: how this or that product affects your mood (the “negative” ones must be abandoned); what food causes satiety faster (should be preferred); what situations lead to overeating (they need to be avoided or controlled).
Number of snacks during the day. This will allow you to establish what was clearly unnecessary in the diet - a pack of nuts in the morning, a chocolate bar in the afternoon, a pack of chips in the evening in front of the TV. Without a weight loss diary, such “small” snacks are not given importance, and they contain a lot of calories.
The quality of food consumed. If you don’t have the time or conditions to prepare fresh homemade food, you need to think through the menu in advance, including healthy snacks, and take food with you so as not to look for something (usually not very suitable) to satisfy your hunger during the day.
Meals on weekdays and weekends. Some people tend to overeat on weekends, while for others, on the contrary, their eating habits “spoil” on weekdays depending on their work or school schedule. If you don't have time to cook on weekdays, you should prepare more meals on the weekends to ensure you're eating healthy during the week.
The relationship between emotional state and food intake. If food choices change during times of stress or depression, you need to find other ways to improve your mood. It should be taken into account that certain foods can cause negative emotions. You need to give them up and track the results. For example, excessive coffee consumption can increase nervousness and irritability.

At the same time, it is possible to establish the body’s reaction to a particular food, as well as poor tolerance of certain foods. These factors do not have a direct effect on the process of weight loss, but can significantly worsen the condition of the gastrointestinal tract and digestive system as a whole. Most often, negative consequences occur after consuming dairy products in case of lactose intolerance or cereals and flour products with increased sensitivity to gluten. If symptoms appear that can be caused by certain foods, you should show your weight loss diary to your doctor and consult with him about adjusting your diet.

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What is a food diary

For those who have not encountered this before, keeping records of what and when you ate is unusual and somewhat strange. However, there is nothing unusual about this. A nutrition and training diary is an indispensable thing for athletes training in the gym for results. After all, to achieve an ideal figure, you need to consider how much you eat and what exactly. And how to do it? - Only by writing down what you eat during the day in a notebook. Then you can analyze this data and understand whether you are doing everything correctly and whether you need to remove something from your diet or, perhaps, add it. Therefore, a diet diary for losing weight should definitely become one of your main “accessories”.

A proper nutrition diary for weight loss allows you to find out the following:

how much or little you eat in a day;
how many calories do you consume;
Do you have a balanced amount of proteins, fats and carbohydrates (BJU).

In addition, this is another way to combat the desire to eat something harmful. You probably don’t want to write down a high-calorie piece of cake in your notebook, do you?

Reviews and results of losing weight

Ksenia, 31 years old, Mytishchi

I started keeping a weight loss diary last year when I gained 15 extra pounds. For six months, I made daily notes, taking into account all the foods I ate, how many calories I received and how much I was able to spend. During this time, the weight returned to normal in about 3 months, and then I continued to enter the specified information for the same period in order to guarantee that the result was consolidated. Then I got so used to taking everything into account and counting that I began to do without recording this data. Now, when I feel that I have fallen out of the correct eating schedule, a week of keeping a diary is enough to get back on track and remain at a normal weight for me.

Irina, 29 years old, Kurgan

I want to say that this technique really works and is very effective. Until I started making entries in my weight loss diary, I didn’t even realize how much unaccounted food I consumed per day, and then I wondered why I couldn’t lose weight. I used a regular diary, which I laid out like a tablet and began to write down everything I eat, do, feel, etc. I bought an electronic kitchen scale and weighed all my food throughout the week. Then I already knew the weight of each portion, and such a need disappeared. It was enough to measure with a cup, bowl or saucer. I also recorded drinks and snacks. A handful of nuts on the way to work, a couple of candies at the reception, a cube of chocolate for tea in the office, a few pieces of French fries stolen from a friend’s tray at the cash register while she was paying. I am writing this to make it clear how much random food is consumed per day, which we immediately forget about. And it is precisely writing down such little things that becomes a very strong incentive to regain control over oneself. With his help, I managed to get rid of 8 extra kilos quite calmly, without much effort or restrictions.

Olga, 43 years old, Kazan

The weight loss diary helped me understand what I eat every day. This is a great way to monitor your nutrition, because without recording it is impossible to understand and remember how many calories were consumed and with what foods or dishes, how nutrition affects lifestyle and health. And also, what kind of physical activity is necessary in order to expend the energy received from food and not allow it to be stored in reserve, or, even better, to use your own fat deposits for active weight loss. If you do everything according to the rules, recording not only nutrition and exercise, but also the sensations, feelings, emotions and other consequences experienced during this process, then the overall picture of the occurrence of all problems becomes very clear. You can immediately see what needs to be corrected, what products to remove or add in order to get rid of excess weight, improve your appearance and even improve your mood. Just start with a few small notes and you will be surprised how much new information you will discover about your own life.

Recommendations from experts

Nutritionists advise following several rules for keeping a diary:

It is necessary to record each meal (preferably immediately or before the meal). Otherwise, you may forget what you ate;
Everything you put in your mouth is recorded. Even a glass of juice. Even a small cracker. Even chewing gum;
practice shows that it is most convenient for those losing weight to plan their diet in advance. Most write out the menu the evening before for the coming day. And some make a plan for the week. They say it is very disciplined;
be completely honest with yourself. You may be tormented by your conscience that you did not include, for example, a piece of pizza or a portion of rolls. However, only complete trust in yourself will help you achieve good results.

Attention! A food diary is not forever. Over time, you will get used to the correct set of foods, their calorie content and weight. Subsequently, a person can independently “fit into” the necessary BZHU. It's just a matter of habit.

You can learn how to correctly calculate BJU from the article “Formula of proper nutrition: how to calculate BJU balance.”