Double your weight loss!! HOW?

There are so many habit changes we can make to lose weight, both large and small, but there's one simple thing that can actually double your weight-loss efforts. You don't have to wake up at 5 a.m. or give up cheese to do it, but you will have to take accountability for what you eat.

One of the largest and longest running weight-loss trials ever conducted, states that the secret to doubling your weight loss is simple: Keep a journal of everything you eat – that does mean everything, not just the bits you want to acknowledge!

Whether you write it down on a tracker, in a notebook, log it in your phone, blog it, tweet it, facebook it or use an online food tracker like Weight Watchers esource tracker, you'll be keeping yourself honest and your diet on track.

"The more food records people kept, the more weight they lost," said the study's lead author Jack Hollis, Ph.D. "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."

By writing down everything you consume it helps you to realise where your calories are coming from, and it gets you thinking about what you eat, which leads to accountability as well as a realisation of where those hidden calories are! Every trip to the fridge to make sure it’s still working, every biscuit you sneak, every extra glass of wine you have, the secret to success is - write it down.

I know it works because I started a blog in 2008 where I tracked everything I ate for 12 months and it helped me to lose and maintain my weight because I knew people might read it, but also because it made me think about what I was consuming. I was more aware not just of what I was choosing to eat but also how much of it, as portion control really is half the battle. A large number of my members assume a bag of chips is 7.5pts because that’s what they’ve read in an eating out guide, they fail to notice the weight of 175g in brackets by the side of it! I’ve weighed a bag of chips and they weigh roughly 1000g!

It’s also a good idea not to leave your food tracking until the end of the day either as you’re more likely to ‘forget’ some of what you’ve eaten! It’s better to try and track your foods as soon as possible after you eat them, both what the food was and how much of it. Other things you could include to help understand why you overeat is the time you ate which helps identify your meal patterns, as well as what you were feeling which can help you realise if you are eating because you were really hungry or just because you’re bored, angry, stressed or just because it’s there!

By taking a few minutes after every meal to acknowledge what you just eaten, you’re likelier to make small permanent changes to help your weight loss. And when you add up all these small changes, you’ll end up with one big change which hopefully will be doubling your weight loss!