Food diaries are a good way of monitoring your food intake. They have been shown to be helpful in helping individuals to modify their eating behaviours. Most people tend to under report their eating by about 10-20% so this needs to be taken into account when analysing someone dietary intake. There are an important tool used in nutritional assessment and also useful to the individual to see their pattern of eating, how they eat around their training sessions and to demonstrate how our moods affect how we eat.
To fill out an accurate food diary you need to be able to accurately record amounts and quantities of food. This can be done by weighing the food although this is very time consuming and difficult to do around your normal routine. Estimating using household measures is a good technique. Food diaries are useful to help us monitor and change our eating behaviours. Those who are trying to lose weight are more successful when they monitor than those who don't.
