Fix Your Diet

I don't support the use of "diets" as published by any company, no matter how sensical and supposedly evidence based it may be. What I'm going to write here is the only thing I've seen to actually work in changing diet, and it's all about behavior rather than trying to find the magic combinations of food.

First, you have to identify what you're eating by completing a food log. Initially, this will only work if you have oversight, so ask your trainer, friend, or family member who you know will provide constructive criticism to check your diet for you. Write down everything you eat and drink on a Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, and then ask your helper to check it. They're looking for basic things at this point, such as...

• Are you eating enough vegetables?
• Are you eating blatantly unhealthy and fatty things?
• Are you eating tons of snack in between meals?
• Are you drinking lots of high calorie beverages?
• Are you cleaning your plate just on principal, and not because you're still hungry?

After your first one, think about simple ways you can improve your diet, like substituting foods. For example, instead of icecream, eat yogurt for dessert (this is my personal main big change since moving to Australia). Later on, you won't even need someone to double check you--you'll realize as you're writing it down where you need to improve.

One tip: only try to make one change at a time. If you complete a food log once every 2-3 months, and make that change each time, you will turn your diet around in a year, easily.

Now, if you want to go the extra mile, you can identify the nutritional content of your food. I would recommend you pick the 2-3 food items you eat every week that you don't really know what's in them. For example, when I did this I chose to analyze my triple decker peanut butter & jelly sandwhich, my scrambled egg sandwhich, and a dish I often cooked for dinner consisting of potatos, sausage, and tomatos pan fried together.

Once you have chosen the foods you want to analyze, next time you make them, you must measure exactly how much of each ingredient you eat in tablespoons, cups, ounces, # of an item (if it's something like eggs), etc. Make sure to include your seasonings as well.

Once you've written it all down, go to the Food Tracker at mypyramid.gov (there are other tools at mypyramid.gov like an activity tracker and menu planner applications which you may find useful). You will have to register to use it, but it's an entirely free service. Follow the instructions and enter in each food on a seperate day if you want to analyze them by themselves (it sums all foods entered on a day). This will open your eyes to how much fat, sodium, etc you are really getting into what you might think is a pretty good diet.

Now that you know what things you're eating, and the impact of some of your staple foods, it's time to make a judgement call. Do you need to make wholesale changes? Are the foods you are eating good, but you're just eating too much of them? Or maybe the foods you're eating are actually packed full of fat, which is why you can't reshape your body despite only eating a few things.

In most cases, portion size and beverage calories are the main culprits in defeating diets. Click on the "diets" label from this blog's home page to find more tips and reviews of recipies to help you out. But in the end, it is a disciplined periodic monitoring of your own diet as described above that is going to make the most difference.