The Value of Tracking, and Great Fat Loss Tips for Your Use!
By tracking your progress in your diet and weight loss training plan, you will begin to see the value of these fat loss tips in a short time.
I am not saying that you should track every calorie, but I do think it is a good idea for everyone to be made aware of the (sometimes, devastating) effects that can result from not understanding what too much of the wrong foods can do to you and how these small bad habits can add up to a huge problem over time.
This post is mainly aimed at helping you to get an overview of your diet. This is one of the best fat loss tips that you can put to use because it really helps you to get to the root of the problem. Tracking can also be applied to your training routine (but that’s a story for another day).
Tracking and Your Efforts Compounded
If you are tracking how far you run, how long your route takes you, your heart rate on your cardio sessions, the calories you are eating each day, the weight you are lifting in your resistance training sessions, etc., you will become more aware of what it takes to reach your goals and you will start to appreciate the effect of the small increments of development that are being compounded to make those big milestones of progress.
Let’s look at a simple example of this: If you drink a can of cola containing 140 calories every day of the week, you would have consumed 980 calories by the end of the week. If you keep it up for a month, you would have knocked back around 3920 calories just from Cola!
This, to me, is quite shocking since the recommended daily allowance for an average person ranges from 2000 – 2800 calories per day, and if you look at the amount of useless calories that are coming from this single seemingly harmless drink each day, it is nearly two days’ worth of food at the end of a month.
This is an example of the compound effect really kicking in. So, even if we just cut this down to ½ a can of cola per day or a can every other day, we will be consuming 1960 calories at the end of the month — coming only from this silly fizzy drink. This means we would have saved ourselves 1960 calories. If you cut the drink out altogether, you would have saved yourself a whopping 51100 calories in a year!
Now, I will point out again that this is a single can of cola per day and has no useful nutritional value for your body. If you don’t track these calories going in, you would not know where that massive chunk of calories came from. This is why tracking is one of the best fat loss tips that you can utilize.
This is just one small factor that may not have been evident without tracking your food intake. Hopefully, this has outlined the importance of the tracking process and you can appreciate how valuable these fat loss tips are when it comes to exposing the hidden foods or even habits that are working against you.
So, you can see that the small changes that you apply to your lifestyle can have great effects over time. These effects can be negative or positive, depending on what you decide.
Become Aware of Your Actions
If you are on a diet and looking for fat loss tips to help you along, or you’re thinking of starting one for whatever reason — to lose a bit of weight or gain some lean muscle — I believe that if you are aware of what you are pushing into your face on a regular day-to-day basis, you will have a much greater understanding of why you are in the position of needing to lose those weight in the first place.
If you are looking to gain some lean muscle, and already have a diet to follow, you will become more aware of the meals you have missed or substituted with bad food choices. You will also begin to see just how often this happens and it may shock you to realize how “un- strict” you are! Again, you may expose habits that you did not know you had.
Most people don’t know exactly what they eat on a day-to-day basis. Also, most people will forget about the doughnut here and fizzy drink there. Now, as we saw earlier, all of these will eventually add up.
A great way to increase your knowledge and become aware of your calorie intake each day is to track what you are eating. I mean, become a “proper job’s worth” and carry a notepad and pen around with you, and write down everything you eat and drink every day for at least 2 weeks. I mean, everything without exception!
By doing this, you will become very aware of the hidden junk that you are consuming. If you had not been keeping track, you would not have noticed or remembered that you ate so and so that other day. But when it is down on paper, it becomes very clear to you when things are not right.
If everything is tracked, you will get to the point where you actually decide that you don’t want that extra doughnut or those few Pringles you were offered at the office, just because you don’t want to enter it in your note book.
Now when this happens, you will actually be cutting back on the bad calories without even trying, or you may even chose the healthier option in the canteen at lunch time simply because it looks better in your note book.
If I wanted to lose all of my extra fat or someone asked me for help with their fat loss program and they were serious about it, the first thing I would do, before sorting myself or “my client” out with a diet plan, is to have them document everything that they ate for a week as part of their daily life (without trying to cut back on anything) and, of course, be 100% honest about it.
The honesty would give us more valuable information to work with. With this information, we can proceed to highlight in red all of the bad choices. Many people will be able to do this on their own without having to sit down with a dietician (we all know the basics of good and bad food).
I would advise, if you are going to try this on your own, that you document your food intake for, at least, two weeks. The longer you stick to it, the more valuable the information will become and the more aware you will become of the food choices that you subconsciously make.
To Sum Up These Fat Loss Tips and Keeping Track of Food
If you are going to give a go at these fat loss tips and tracking of your food, get yourself a small note pad/journal that can be taken with you wherever you go.
Track everything you are eating to expose bad eating habits that would have otherwise slipped unnoticed.
Write down everything you eat on a day-to-day basis for, at least, 2 weeks. Be 100% honest and remember to include drinks. Remember that tea and coffee also sometimes contain sugar, so they are just as important. Be a “job’s worth” person: If it goes in your mouth, write it in the book!
After the two weeks is complete, highlight in red the bad food choices on your notes, identify the accompanying bad habits and work to finding alternative good habits to replace them.
You will be surprised at how much these fat loss tips and tracking of your food intake will aid your weight loss program or weight training.
If there are any questions that I’ve not addressed or you would like to share thoughts and experiences, please leave a comment. As always, I am happy to help out wherever I can.
Good Luck and Stay Motivated!
If you are interested in fitness motivation, check out my latest book, Fitness And Exercise Motivation. If you follow the information in this book, you simply cannot fail!
Check it out here:
Please, feel free to contact me if you have any questions about health, fitness, etc. I will always do my best to get back to you.
All the best,
Jim