If you’re feeling overwhelmed at the idea of a food diary, you’re probably someone who will benefit the most from this kind of approach. It might be the first time you’ve stepped back and really paid attention to your daily eating behavior, and you might be amazed at what it shows about yourself.

What did you learn most by keeping a food diary? Were there times of the day you consistently were most hungry? Did you notice a pattern in your eating that was good—or bad?

I find that I become somewhat obsessive when keeping this food diary. I have a past history of anorexia and now have ballooned up to 1.5x my previous weight although I am still very concerned about looking thin. When I keep the food diary, I start thinking about food ALL THE TIME and feeling the need to write every little thing down, then beating myself up when I add up the totals and realize, yet again, that I have eaten way over my "goal" calories. Any advice for how to use this diary without having it contribute to negative thoughts and obsessing??

Well first you have to make sure that your goal is actually reasonable. If you are aiming for 1000 calories per day, then you might have a rough time.

We use FitDay and log in EVERY thing that we eat. We agreed that no matter how small, it still had to be logged and counted. For us, what made it work, was learning our patterns. Once we were able to learn what each meal would average, it was a lot easier to approach snack time. As you see that lunch might have been higher then you wanted, you can adjust dinner or the final snack.