Technology Makes Tracking New Habits Easier

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Self-monitoring and developing the problem solving skills to deal with difficult environments and personal situations have been identified as factors linked to successful weight loss and effective long-term weight management strategies. Regular weighing and recording of daily food intake and physical activities during the initial phase of losing weight, during the maintenance phase of weight control, and during increased food exposure can help prevent weight regain.

Regular tracking helps you identify when weight gain occurs, so you can reinforce the lifestyle practices that can bring your weight back into control. Monitoring, assessing, and regulating changes are crucial components for healthy living. Since a temporary loss of weight control is common, the key is learning how to recognize situations that can lead to overeating or a return to a more sedentary lifestyle, so you can take timely actions.

Benefits of Tracking Lifestyle Changes

Self-monitoring is an important task that involves assessing the number the of calories consumed throughout the day with the amount of calories expended throughout the day. Listed below are four benefits of tracking your food, weight and daily exercise:

1) Learn More About Your Body – The current gold standard for clinical weight loss is called behavioral weight loss that is achieved thru self-monitoring and self-regulation of lifestyle interventions based on learning more about your body.

2) Builds Healthy Habits – Recording your daily food intake and exercise habits are positive techniques for self-monitoring that can provide important feedback that will allow you to build more habits for healthy living.

3) Tracks Body Mass Index – Although it may be hard and sometimes discouraging to weigh yourself while losing weight, it is recommended to so and use the numbers to help calculate changes in Body Mass Index.

4) Easier to Focus on What Works – Self-monitoring is a key to implementing behavioral modifications like dietary changes and better exercise habits. Moreover, there are a multitude of ways to self-monitor from pen and paper to smartphone apps.

Boost Your Self Warning System for Weight Control

Researchers advocate self-monitoring of lifestyle interventions to lose weight for living healthy. Observing and recording eating and exercise behaviors followed by self-monitoring of the feedback will increase your self-awareness of lifestyle interventions as an early warning system to make adjustments for better outcomes. Study participants who tracked energy consumption and expenditure developed better self-awareness to support self-regulation of progress. Since tracking is positively related to long-term weight control, the comprehensiveness and consistency of record keeping for food intake and energy expenditure should become a habit into itself.

Here at Metabolic Research Center, we have been educating clients about the dangers of following diet plans that severely restrict food diversity. Visit the MRC location nearest you to learn more about self-monitoring your lifestyle interventions.