“THE DIET TRICK-THAT WORKS!”
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There’s one measure of success most diet experts agree on: keeping a food diary.
Sydney nurse Lidija Jurisic had been working for 15 years when she noticed she was eating sugar to stay awake.
“I was 50, I was sick and I just couldn’t do it anymore,” Jurisic, 53, recalls.
“People say, ‘you’re a nurse, you’re supposed to know [about nutrition],’ but you just don’t think about it.”
After seeking help from Food and Nutrition Australia dietitian Sharon Natoli, Jurisic kept a food diary for three months.
The result? A complete change in diet and exercise patterns for her and her family.
“I don’t have butter in the house anymore,” she reports, “and my husband cooks with more vegetables.”
Sydney mum Sarah Thompson, 37, joined Weight Watchers in December 2003 and began “tracking”- keeping a food diary- for four months.
“The food diary became an incredibly important tool to help me lose weight,” says Thompson, who is 1.57m and dropped from 72.5kg to 57.5kg in eight months. “I just wasn’t conscious of what I was putting in my mouth.”
A food diary requires you to record everything you eat, every day- including every snack and bite-sized portion. “It’s a well-known fact at Weight Watchers that people who keep a food diary are more successful at losing weight than those who don’t,” says WW’s general manager of publishing the program development, Jane Waterhouse.
Adds Natoli, who has recommended food diaries to 75 per cent of her weight-loss clients for the past eight years, “It helps people not to eat things, because they know they have to write it down.”
American research also commends the effectiveness of food diaries: most of the 5,000 members of the US National Weight Control Registry, who lost on average of 23kg and kept it off for an average of seven years, monitored their food intake.
“It’s a major marker of success,” says registry co-founder Dr James Hill. But why such a success? “There’s a lot of power in pen to paper. Writing something down can really help people commit,” Waterhouse explains.
“A lot of people find food diaries very motivating because there’s a sense of achievement.”
Count Everything
“It was difficult at first, because I would forget,” recalls Jurisic of her diary entries. While many people track for a month or longer, Natoli believes that a three-day trial can be just as effective: “Two week days and one weekend day, if you’re just wanting to get a snapshot of what you’re eating.”
You can’t get away with simply writing “scrambled eggs,” either. “Calculate the grams of fat, amounts and also the time you eat,” recommends Natoli. “Your dietitian can then analyze the results and make some suggestions about where further changes would be required.”
Be Honest.
People who are in denial about their weight have a tendency to lie about their eating habits, says Natoli. “People can under-report what they eat by up to 60 per cent. The more overweight you are, the more you tend to under-report.”
With a diary, honesty is the only policy – and problem areas are quickly put under the microscope “It’s quite sensible when somebody points it out to you,” Jurisic says. Adds ‘Thompson, It helps you watch your portion sixes and think about what you’re putting in your mouth.”
Seeing results.
Diaries are excellent for highlighting those little snacks and empty calories that add up during the day. “Often when people get home, they’re really hunger,” Natoli says. “they didn’t realize they eat almost the equivalent of another meal before they actually have dinner,” “I also knew all about nutrition,” says Thompson, who lost 15kg while tracking.
“Vegies are the one thing that I noticed I wasn’t eating enough of.” A diary is also useful to balance vitamin or mineral intake. “You might be eating a lot of one particular food group, which is making you want to snack in other areas,” Waterhouse explains.
When to Stop.
“Once people are in the swing of things and they’re eating well, a food diary loses its v alue.” Says Natoli. “A month or six weeks is probably long enough.”
Never fear: your food diary will always be waiting for you should old habits return and the weight creep back on. Says Thompston, “After Christmas, I put on a bit of weight. To get that weight off, it was really easy for me – I just started tracking again.”
Rebecca Dettman, from “Who” magazine
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