Keeping Food Diary Can Help You Shed Extra Pounds

Here is good news for those heavyweight people who are desperate to shed extra pounds. Scientists at the Kaiser Permanente’s Center for Health Research in Portland, Ore. have discovered an easy and powerful tool that may double a person’s weight loss.

Keeping a food diary, daily record of all food consumed with a detailed account of the calories it packs, is a powerful tool in helping people lose weight, the latest study suggests. It says that those who maintain such a diary regularly shed about twice as much extra pounds as those who do not regularly keep a food diary.

To reach their findings, the researchers looked at 1,685 middle-aged men and women over six months. About 44 percent of the participants were African Americans, who are believed to have elevated risk for conditions linked to obesity such as type-2 diabetes and heart disease compared to their counterparts.

All the participants were overweight or obese and had high blood pressure and elevated cholesterol, and were asked to keep daily food diaries, to follow a heart-healthy DASH (a Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension) diet rich in fruits and vegetables and low-fat or non-fat dairy, reduce alcohol consumption, attend weekly group meetings and exercise daily for at least 30 minutes mostly by walking.

The researchers found that after six months of the study who managed to keep food journals six or seven days a week lost about 18 pounds compared to 9 pounds for those who did not. The average weight loss was 13 pounds.

“The more food records people kept, the more weight they lost,” said lead author Jack Hollis Ph.D., a researcher at Kaiser Permanente’s Center for Health Research in Portland, Ore. “Those who kept daily food records lost twice as much weight as those who kept no records. It seems that the simple act of writing down what you eat encourages people to consume fewer calories.”

The recent study substantiates previous research that acknowledges the value of food journals in helping overweight or obese people shed weight.

“Nowadays, there is this notion that people can’t lose weight, and that’s not at all what we found. Keeping food diaries creates awareness of what you’re eating. And quite honestly, most people don’t know where the extra calories are coming from,” Victor Stevens, senior investigator at Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research in Portland, Ore., and a co-author of the study said.

The progression of obesity in America has reached epidemic levels. American Obesity Association (AOA) has described the obesity on its Website as a complex, multi-factorial chronic disease involving environmental (social and cultural), genetic, physiologic, metabolic, behavioral and psychological components. It is the second leading cause of preventable death in the U.S.

More than two-thirds of Americans are overweight or obese, who are spending a hefty $35 billion a year on weight-loss products. With obesity becoming an increasingly large problem in the United States and the price of weight-loss packages is growing day by day, the fresh findings could provide a sigh of relief to those who are searching for an inexpensive route to a healthier weight.

Funded by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute at the National Institutes of Health, the study will be published in the August issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.