'Food Diary' benefits and tips on how to maintain it for a healthy you!

A food diary is a built-in mindfulness tool to check in with yourself on how you feel before, during, and after you eat. Even though maintaining a food diary seems like a drag, a study published in a popular health magazine found that tracking what you eat takes less than 15 minutes a day, when done regularly. Here are the benefits of a food diary and how you can maintain one-

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How to maintain a food diary?

• Write down what you have eaten as soon as you can. The key to nailing the whole food diary thing is to actually record what you’re having at the exact moment you’re having it. But, since that is not always possible, don’t worry. If you can take a quick picture of what you’re ordering or a meal before you eat it and fill in the details after, is okay too.

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• Write down where you're eating. Most of us don't eat every meal and snack in a dining room on a table with a tablecloth. Keeping a physical or electronic record of where you eat will help you become aware of your current habits and the scenarios that impact them.
• Note what you may have "missed" at any meal. If you skip meals or skip satisfying components at a meal, you are likely to overeat later. Therefore, always keep a note in case of any missed meals.

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• Use your food diary as a library. It's a go-to list of your favourite items to order such as the restaurants where you picked salad, great recipes you enjoyed, and which options or modifications left you feeling satisfied.
• Be honest. If you’re using a food log but not being totally truthful in your entries, then it's no longer working as a tool for you. The only person who has to see it is you. Start from a realistic place and make gradual changes. Habits are a result of the choices you make consistently.

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