Achieve Long Term Weight Loss with a Calorie Counter

Many women with a few pounds to lose are all too familiar with the roller coaster ride that dieting can be. You hear about an exciting new diet that will have you losing weight immediately by just eating a certain food or type of nutrient and you’re just sure it will work for you. You lose a little weight, but sooner or later you get tired of the same foods and gain it all back and then some. It’s a self-defeating cycle that is very hard to break because none of these diets require a change in your lifestyle. A calorie tracker can help you lose weight for good because it encourages a permanent switch to healthier eating.

When you are journaling all of the food that you eat, a food database is used to calculate the number of calories and nutrients in each food. Since an online journal often has a set calorie goal for the day, if you eat all of your calories for breakfast, you could find that you are very hungry throughout the day. This is how journaling encourages a switch to a healthier lifestyle. Fruits and vegetables are lower in calories than other foods, meaning you can have a lot of them at a meal, more than enough to keep you feeling full throughout the day, even if you are eating fewer total calories in a day.

When you consistently use your food diary, you will find that foods that are higher in fats, sugars, and the like will take up a large proportion of your total calorie budget for the day. Since nobody likes to feel hungry, success in weight loss is very often achieved through a slow switch to healthier food items and a natural replacement of high calorie foods with lower calorie foods with lots of good nutrients. Eventually, your body gets used to the healthier foods, so much so that instead of craving the fats and sugars, you crave fruits and vegetables.

Long term weight loss is achieved with a food journal through this natural switch to a healthier lifestyle. If you go into your weight loss journey knowing that the changes that you are making are going to be permanent, it can be a lot easier to stay consistent. Weight loss and maintenance throughout the years takes more than just a fad diet, it takes years of constant awareness of what kinds of foods you are eating and the total calories that you are consuming in a day.