An Automatic Food Diary

Nonsurgical weight loss and weight management are difficult but possible. A national group called the National Weight Control Registry shows that it is possible to lose weight and maintain a goodly amount of the weight loss. And keeping a food diary is an important tool used by persons in the registry. However, food diaries are often inaccurate. But a physician suggests that a minor modification to food-diary use can increase a diary's accuracy.

The physician is Tim Harlan. And he writes in the Huffington Post that planning your meals is a key to improving the accuracy of the food diary. He calls the planning a way to create an automatic diary. That is, by planning next week's meals and snacks, a person can compute, in advance, the number of calories the person will ingest during the week. So, assuming the person sticks to an established plan, that person automatically has an accurate account of the calories in the coming week's diet.

Having an accurate accounting of the calories you take in is important in weight loss and weight control. Like everything else, if you don't measure it, you can't manage it. Indeed, to some extent, Harlan's advice reflects the sentiment of other weight loss experts. Some experts insist that in order to control your diet, you should adhere to a similar diet each day. Further, you should prepare your own meals and avoid eating out. These actions will give you an excellent opportunity to know your food calorie content, before you eat the food, enabling you to better count the calories.

Perhaps, weight loss providers should emphasize, even more, the importance of meal planning in weight loss and weight control. The providers could encourage an individual to spend some time during the weekend planning the next week's meals. And the providers could advise an individual to eat sparingly when away from home, since it may be difficult to determine the calorie content of food eaten in places other than the home. These actions could enable a person to more accurately account for the calories in their future diet. Thus, the person could obtain a more accurate food diary, and, perhaps, more weight control.

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Tags: strategic management, environmental analysis, competitive intelligence, business intelligence, strategic planning