Quick results are mostly short term
It's so easy to be lured by quick-fix diets offering rapid, painless weight loss. But all research shows that making healthy and sustainable changes to your eating and activity habits is the safe and effective route to long term slimming success.
It is important is to do it in a healthy and realistic way. This allows you to get the nutrients you need, feel positive about helping your health and well being, and get on with living your life. It also means you'll be developing new skills and attitudes to help you keep the weight off.
Quick-fix diets are usually short-term with a rigid set of rules. While you may lose weight, the diets are too rigid to sustain for long periods.
Nutritionally inadequate
They're also likely to be nutritionally inadequate and could lead to problems such as iron-deficiency or poor bone health. They also don't help you to address your real obstacles to losing weight and keeping it off. Being more active in daily life helps to lift mood and self-esteem, regulate (not increase) appetite, maintain muscle, and make long-term success more likely.
What is a food diary and how will it help me?
Max recommends people who are struggling to manage their weight to keep a food diary. A food diary is a record that you should carry with you at all times to record within it every single thing that you consume both food and drink. Your food diary could simply a sheet of paper, but Max can provide you with a simple to use template.
The main purpose of your food diary is to show you what you are really eating. Frequently we forget what we have eaten, or may subconsciously put items out of our mind. For a food diary to be effective, you must make sure you're honest and record every single thing you eat or drink in your food diary at the time that it is consumed. Otherwise, the under reporting of calories in your food diary will lead you to believe you are eating less and encourage the temptation to eat more. This in fact, may happen in up to 50% of cases.
Record the types of food in your food diary that you are eating, and importantly, the portion sizes. You should also record what was happening at the time you ate the item. Were you watching TV? Were you feeling worried, or depressed? How did you feel after you were finished eating? What were your energy levels like? This should all go in your food diary.
Providing an accurate record of your eating patterns
Patterns may emerge in your food diary, that show when you are most likely to snack. In the case of TV watching Max may be able to modify your behaviour so as to avoid the times when you have a higher risk of snacking.
Overeating can lead to further destructive behaviour. A person may feel guilty for eating a particularly indulgent item and these guilt feelings may increase the depression regarding your weight. It becomes a cycle of eating leading to guilt, leading to more eating for comfort. A food diary may help you identify such patterns and help you stop the cycle.
Your food diary can help you to see that foods that you are eating are not nutritionally the best that you could be eating. That your calories could be better spent on healthier foods that may leave you feeling fuller for longer, than perhaps that bar of chocolate that you would normally reach for.
Motivation for your healthier eating regime can be garnered by seeing just how badly you have been eating. Once you see that it is the fault of your diet and not some other, unseen factor that is making you gain weight then finally you can see that change is within your own control, and so we can together begin to work towards change.
We may choose to add in daily calorie goals to your diary. As your daily food is consumed you take the calorie value away from your daily allowance, allowing you to clearly see how much you have available to you. A food diary can be a great help to those who are willing to use it correctly, but this can only happen if you are honest with yourself.
