food diaries

Over the past few weeks I've been making a much more focused effort to take better care of myself in general, and to finally lose weight, more specifically. I'm happy to report that suddenly I'm doing much better than before. I was finally able to put it in a context that made sense to me (and those contexts are very idiosyncratic, I'm discovering.)

One thing that really helps me is keeping a food diary - and I was very happy to see this article online today showing that those who keep food diaries are more successful at losing weight than those who don't.

Keeping a food diary, however, can be pretty tedious. I wanted to give you all a plug (not even a reimbursed one!) for the online food diary at My Food Diary.com. I've been using this food diary for several months now, and it makes things much easier and keeps me motivated. Most of the foods I eat are online and if not, I can save them in my account to easily add them again. What I like the most about it, however, is that after I finish my food and exercise log for the day, myfooddiary gives me a helpful little summary of how much weight I would lose (or not lose!) if I kept up at that pace.

It's been surprisingly motivating (I am motivated by very little I am afraid) to see that little summary every day - it tells me when I will weigh my goal weight if I keep eating/exercising at that rate, etc.

So that is my free plug :) It's also pretty affordable at $9/month - much less than most of us probably spend on coffee per month, let alone take out!