A food diary is exactly as it sounds, and since it is a diary, there is no reason to lie to it. You in essence will be the only one to see it, therefore you need to actually use it to track what you eat. This is a great tool that you can use to see where it is you are messing up on your way to creating a healthy life for yourself.

What Should I Put In

This is a real simple question and the answer is everything. If you had a scoop of peanut butter, write it down, snuck a small piece of chocolate, then put it in the journal. This is something you will need to use, it is something that will allow you to be able to track all food consumption.

You will need to enter not only the food, but you should enter calories as well as fat that intake in a meal or a snack, or secret snack. The time that the food was eaten as well as actual amounts. When recording the calories and such, it needs to be relative to the actual portion, not the recommended portion. See how much you should have eaten and then realize where you can cut to make a better life for yourself. Make sure to enter in what you cooked the food in as well. Depending on if something is fried or if you added butter will alter your intake of fat and calories.

Where To Get One

A good food diary is available in a health food store or else one can download it online and then print it up. There is also the option to enter your food online and allow it to calculate what you are taking in and then let the computer how good or bad of a day you are having. Just make sure again that you enter everything because if this is not done, then it is a useless tool that will not serve a single purpose for the user other than build false self confidence.

Another option if you want to make your own food diary, you can do this as well. Simply purchase a notebook, divide the pages into columns, tally, and then calculate all of the food that you eat for a week to a month. Enter all of the important information such as time and portions as well here. This will allow you to see if you are truly overeating, or if you are simply eating at the wrong time.

Using this journal will help you to not only see where you could eat better but how to better prepare all of the meals you eat.