Start a food journal

I am soooo sorry that I completely neglected to post much of anything for the past week or two. I'm currently on vacation in sunny Florida and last week I was running around like crazy making sure I didn't forget anything. Anywho, today I wanted to talk about something that I've been doing for a few months now, and that is keeping a food journal. Studies have actually shown that doing so helps you lose about twice as much weight because it makes you aware of what you're eating and how much of it as well as making you accountable for it. I personally use MyFitnessPal or Lose It! to write down what I'm eating and drinking every day. Now you can use whatever you want for your journal as long as you're writing down what you're eating.

The cool thing about both of those apps is that you can enter in the number of calories you burned (if you know) and they will automatically adjust the number of calories you should consume that day and still stay within your goal. The PumpUp app that I use tells me how many calories I burn at the end of my workout or if you don't have or want to use that app, you can find another site online that tells you how many calories you burn doing certain exercises.

I have a few tips to help you with your food journal that I've found help me.

1. Write down everything. As bad as you may feel about your indulgences or "cheat" days, still put them in your food diary. It will help you keep track of where to make changes.
2. Don't forget portions. It may feel like a pain at first, but it definitely helps you realize how big your portions actually should be and gets you to be creative with your meals.
3. Don't wait until the end of the day to write everything down. Then you have to worry about remembering everything, how much you ate, etc.
4. Cook for yourself. This may be obvious, but I've found that cooking at home is a lot healthier than eating out and unless you're getting a basic salad with virtually nothing extra in it, finding low-calorie meals at a restaurant is difficult. Not impossible, but difficult.