Keep a Food Diary, Lose Twice as Much Weight

Keeping tabs on what you eat with a food diary can double your weight loss, a new study shows.

While the idea of food diaries has been around a long time, this latest research offers more proof they help you shed more poundage, said study co-author Dr. Victor J. Stevens, a senior investigator at Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research, in Portland, Ore.

Writing down your intake yields clues about where the extra calories are coming from, Stevens explained, and participants said it got easier with time: “The more I got into it, the easier it became to keep track of what I ate every day,” Frank Bitzer, 64, a retired project manager for the computer industry who lost 26 pounds, told the study leaders.