Friday with Heidi: How to read a food diary to maximise weight loss
Since I wrote to you last week I’ve been to Wales to source and secure a venue for the FastTrack Fit Camp Weekender event in September this year.
It was an interesting day. I was snowed on in Gloucester and treated to bright sunshine in Wales. I saw two very different locations and, for this event, chose the sunny Wales one (sun is part of the arrangement isn’t it?!)
It’s been incredibly well received and as of today (Thursday) I have one space left. It’s there for the taking and, if it’s not gone before this goes out on Friday morning, I’d love for you to join us. We always have a wonderful time. I make sure you are fed fresh and from scratch each day, have a full but interesting schedule of activities and we make it fun too.
This year the venue is just lovely. Here’s the video I made after last week’s trip out.
(Sorry – video is no longer available.)
However all that aside I wanted to share with you a little tip on how to know what to look for when you are looking at your food diary.
Keeping a food diary is a great way to spot habits and patterns that you may not be aware of if you rely on your memory. And keeping a food diary is an excellent way of managing your food if you are on a weight loss programme.
- Keeping a food diary is only as good as the information you put in it (so be truthful!)
- It’s only as good as the consistency with which you fill it in (so fill it in even on an off day)
- It’s only useful if you look at it as a whole and not on a per day basis.
Try looking at it like this, over a week’s worth of food diary…
- take a highlighter and mark all the times in the week when you ate fresh vegetables or salad with a green pen.
- using a yellow pen all the fresh fruit.
- using brown all the times you ate a carbohydrate like potatoes, rice, pasta, pastry, bread, crackers, butternut squash, cous cous, pizza, bagels, croissants, dried fruits, added sugar to drinks etc.
- using orange all the times you had a protein like meat, fish, eggs, pulses, dairy, nuts.
- using blue all the times you have fats like oils, butter, margarine, nuts, seeds, cream, cheese,
- using red all the times you have what you may regard ‘a treat’, like alcohol, chocolate, sweets, cakes, ice cream.
Some items will be ringed more than once.
What colours shine through?
Where could you make a 1% difference to your meals to get a different result?
If you have lots of green and yellow – great!
If you have lots of brown and red it could be the reason things aren’t going to plan.
If you want help cleaning up your diet, or getting some clarity over what to do next to improve your health and result please drop me an email (heidi@fasttrack-fitcamp.co.uk) and we can arrange a FastTrack Nutritional Review — It’s £50 (inc of VAT) and you get a 1-2-1 appointment with me to go over your food intake with some suggestions of how to improve it to get you the results you want.
I’d love to be able to help you get started.
(Here’s a view from our Welsh venue from last week — and breeaathe!)
