Keeping track of what you eat and your activity levels can be a powerful tool for weight loss and controlling your blood sugar levels. Dieters find recording everything they eat can help them avoid mindless munching and help them to focus on what they are taking in. Some people using the diaries decide to avoid too many snacks simply because they do not want to have to write it down.
Keeping a food diary can help diabetics discover their food triggers... much as smokers discover what entices them to smoke. Patterns of overeating while watching television, for example, can make over-eaters stop and consider whether it is possible to watch the tube without eating. Eating at times of anxiety or boredom can become easier to detect when food intake is written down along with the time and activity that went with it.
Several types of food diaries are now available. The basic elements of any food diary are:
* type of food,
* portion size, and
* time of day.
Including the place where the food was eaten, emotions, and the degree of hunger can also be helpful in tracking down reasons for overeating and eating unhealthful foods. For diabetics it is useful to include blood sugar levels to find out how the levels fluctuate depending upon what types and quantities of foods are eaten.
Food diaries have been a traditional way of keeping track of what people eat, but now a mobile phone application called Nutricam can be used to photograph foods and explain them with a voice recording before eating them. The information is then sent to a website where it can be analysed by a dietitian.
Investigators at the Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia, tested the new mobile application on 10 people with Type 2 diabetes. Their results were published in the Journal of Telemedicine and Telecare in September 2011. The participants recorded their food consumption with both Nutricam and a written food diary for 3 days. The number of calories was slightly underestimated in the phone applications, possibly because some of the photographs were obscured and voice recordings were unclear. Six participants found that recording by telephone was faster than using the written diary and two reported the time involved was about the same. It was therefore concluded that with some improvements the telephone system could be a viable alternative to using a written diary.
Start recording what you eat; you might be surprised what you discover about yourself.
By Beverleigh H Piepers
Keeping a food diary can help diabetics discover their food triggers... much as smokers discover what entices them to smoke. Patterns of overeating while watching television, for example, can make over-eaters stop and consider whether it is possible to watch the tube without eating. Eating at times of anxiety or boredom can become easier to detect when food intake is written down along with the time and activity that went with it.
Several types of food diaries are now available. The basic elements of any food diary are:
* type of food,
* portion size, and
* time of day.
Including the place where the food was eaten, emotions, and the degree of hunger can also be helpful in tracking down reasons for overeating and eating unhealthful foods. For diabetics it is useful to include blood sugar levels to find out how the levels fluctuate depending upon what types and quantities of foods are eaten.
Food diaries have been a traditional way of keeping track of what people eat, but now a mobile phone application called Nutricam can be used to photograph foods and explain them with a voice recording before eating them. The information is then sent to a website where it can be analysed by a dietitian.
Investigators at the Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia, tested the new mobile application on 10 people with Type 2 diabetes. Their results were published in the Journal of Telemedicine and Telecare in September 2011. The participants recorded their food consumption with both Nutricam and a written food diary for 3 days. The number of calories was slightly underestimated in the phone applications, possibly because some of the photographs were obscured and voice recordings were unclear. Six participants found that recording by telephone was faster than using the written diary and two reported the time involved was about the same. It was therefore concluded that with some improvements the telephone system could be a viable alternative to using a written diary.
Start recording what you eat; you might be surprised what you discover about yourself.
By Beverleigh H Piepers
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