When my patients ask me for help with weight loss, the first thing I tell them to do is to keep a food diary. As I noted in my Real World Diet Coaching Essay on “Why You Should Keep A Food Diary,” I think that keeping a food diary is a great tool for weight loss because it not only lets you see exactly how much you’re eating, it also lets you assess where you might improve your diet – by getting more vegetables, for example.
The problem with keeping a written food diary, however, is that they can be extremely inaccurate. Studies vary in their estimates, but it seems that as many as half of all people keeping a food diary write down less than what they actually eat. Now, this doesn’t necessarily mean that people aren’t being honest. Often food diaries are filled out at the end of the day, counting on people being able to remember what they’ve eaten. Photographic vs. Written Food Diaries
