Why Meal Times, Fat, And Fiber Are So Important

At this point, you should be keeping up with your food journal by documenting what you eat and how much of it you consume. But what good is a food journal if that is all you add to it? After all, there are a variety of other things that you need to consider, as calories and portion size alone do not entirely determine how much weight you will lose.

While it may seem odd at first, one of the most important things you should track in your food journal is when you start and end a meal. By noting when you begin and finish eating, you will be able to determine whether or not you are eating too fast or too slowly. Because so may people eat so fast, you may find that you are not giving your food proper time to digest.

Tracking your meal times will also help you determine whether or not you are eating too often or not often enough. If you have already read our report on calorie counting, you will know that it is better to eat a larger number of smaller meals throughout the day than it is to eat a smaller number of huge meals.

Furthermore, keeping up with your meal times should help you avoid what is commonly known as grazing, or eating all day long. You should work on your meal times until you achieve an average span of four hours between meals.

Other things that you will want to make a note of in your food journal include the amount of fat that your diet includes and the amount of fiber that you ingest each day. While you want to watch out for high calorie foods on any diet, you should not be eating many fats either. Too much fat will make it much more difficult to lose weight in the long and short term.

Finally, people need to have a daily allotment of fiber for a healthy intestinal system, so keep track of that nutritional data as well, especially if you are having problems with your bowels.