Tuesday

Track Your Food How?

When it comes to managing your weight we known that it mostly boils down to our ability or lack of ability to properly control our food intake.
Track Your Food

Successful weight loss is mostly dictated by eating less in terms of calories than we burn. Weight gain is the opposite, where above all else, you need to eat more. Theses concepts are fairly simple to understand. 

How To Track Food Intake?

Execution however, trend to be significantly tougher one of the main reasons why: 

According to the scientific data more often than not, we tend to underpart our food intake. In other word we suck it understanding our food. We often think were eating less than we actually are and that's why we don't see any result.

So, How do we fix this ?

Well you known those calories tracking apps you fit fried has always been harping about that might just do the trick. Track your food to known exactly how much you're eating crazy idea right ?

In all seriousness, monitoring your food can be quite effective. And it's actually nothing new even back in 1993 studies implementing self-monitoring tests were able to yield great weight loss results with pen and paper no less. 

Nowdays, mobile apps make tracking easier than ever, even recording intake just by scanning your food labels. But to elucidate tracking efficacy further we can take little dive into a fresh 2019. 


Research On Food Tracker

Study from the journal of obesity Society. In this 6 month weight loss study, subjects were instructed to track every single thing the ate or drank into a web-based food tracking system.
Food journal

However researchers weren't interested in the subject food choices but rather their tracking pattern with that in mind, data was collected on the amount of times subjects logged their food per day the time they spent on the website the amount of days per month they tracked their food and the amount of weight they lost.

The results ! Those that lost most weight categorized as losing 10% or more of their initial bodyweight were the most consistent in their food tracking endeavors.
Those that lost the least categorized as losing less that 5% were also the least consistent.

At the end of the study, the most successful group tracked 21 days of month with an average of about 3 session per day. The least successful group cocked in at only 9 days per month with a one and half session average per day and more than half quite tracking completely. 

Simply put track your food folks.

Now, if you're one of those that complain that tracking takes too much time and effort. Note that the most successful group in the study initially took only 23 minutes per day to track their food. By the end it dropped down to just 16 minutes. 


 Best Free Food Tracker Website / Apps

Consumer apps like "MyFitnessPal" should be much easier and quicker to use. Perhaps taking only 10 minutes of your day.
  • MyFitnessPal (Free)
  • FatSecret (Free) 
  • YAZIO (Free) 
  • Lose It! (Free)  
  • MyPlate Calorie Tracker (Free)
  • Fitbit (Free) 
  • Fooducate (Free) 
  • My Diet Coach (Free) 
  • Charity Miles (Free) 
  • MyNetDiary PRO ($3.99) 

Tips for tracking your food.

Now a few tips on actually tracking your food.

1. Log In Everything: Make sure you log everything especially those little snacks you think wouldn't make a difference. They Do

2. Track Frequently: Best practice is about 3 times per day like the folks in the study preferably around the times you have your big meals.

3. Adjust Intakes When Needed: Once you know your average intake adjust it as you are fit. In short more food to if you're trying to gain weight. Less food or better yet more exercise if you're trying to lose weight.

4. Be Consistent: No explanation needed there. 

One more thing even through tracking's main appeal is to learn your calorie needs, it doesn't mean to just go eat whatever you want until you hit that magic calorie number.

Choosing healthy whole food choices is still a good idea. And getting something like more protein especially for weight loss might help you achieve your results more effectively.

For now let's get it and happy tracking folks.

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