How to Keep a Food Record

A food record or diet log is a diary of the food you eat. By keeping a food record, you are more likely to succeed in losing weight. In fact, research published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition also demonstrates that when you write down what you eat in a food record, you are more likely to keep the weight off. A written food journal is a good tool for tracking your meals and snacks because it lets you examine you have eaten.

Things You'll Need

• Pencil or pen
• Notebook with lined sheets

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Instructions

• 1

  Create your food journal. Allocate one page per day. Leave the top line of each page for the date. Create three columns that run down the length of the rest of the page. Label the top of the three columns “Time,” “Food” and “Quantity,” respectively.

• 2

  Write down the date for the day of food you are recording on the top line of your page.

• 3

  Write down the time of day that you ate your first meal or snack in the first column.

• 4

  Write down every food and beverage item that you ate or drank at that first meal or snack. Create a vertical list in the middle column by writing down the first food item, writing the second one on the line underneath it, writing the third food underneath that and so on until you have written down each item.

• 5

  Write down the quantity you ate next to eat food item in the third column.

• 6

  Repeat Steps 2 to 4 for every meal and snack that you ate that day.

• 7

  Repeat Steps 1 to 5 every day to continue your food record.