Monitor Changes from Old Habits to New Habits

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Learning the self-monitoring skills needed to make smart decisions about food choices and daily exercise provides a common sense approach to permanent weight loss that will allow you to live a healthier life and without all of the hassles of fad dieting. Routine self-monitoring can help you remember what you have eaten that day, so you can actually see where you can make improvements. Plus, weighing yourself regularly to be more successful in keeping it off in the long run.

Exercise can help speed up the metabolism and fat burning and should be done regularly to achieve long-term outcomes. With new eating and exercise behaviors in place, you should be able to achieve sustainable weight loss results over time. Men and women who have been living a sedentary lifestyle, a slow progression is the recommended strategy. Starting with thirty minutes of low-impact daily exercise with a gradual build-up over several weeks is a prudent approach.

Benefits of Tracking Behavioral Modifications

Lifestyle based interventions can promote behavioral modification strategies for dietary and exercise changes that allow for better long-term weight control. Listed below are four benefits of tracking your food, weight and daily exercise:

1) Triggers Mindful Behaviors – Self-monitoring is a strategy that teaches you to self-assess your eating and exercise habits to develop more mindful behaviors.

2) Better Understanding of Your Habits – In addition to helping you be more mindful about food and exercise; tracking can help you monitor calorie intake and burn as well as achieve your nutritional goals for living healthy.

3) Reduces Chances of Weight Regain – Studies suggest that participants who were highly committed to self-monitoring developed self-regulatory behavior that may be critical to long-term weight control.

4) Helps You Reach Your Goals – Self-monitoring is a skill used to keep track of your own actions and performance to help you reach your target goals for losing weight and keeping it off.

Personalized Lifestyle Interventions at MRC

Researchers say that the best self-monitoring tool is the one that you are most likely to use to track lifestyle interventions for daily dietary intake and physical activity. If pen and paper works best for you, then go with it; but be consistent. In contrast, the use of the latest self-monitoring technology alone, without the addition of human support, is highly unlikely to produce meaningful changes in weight for healthy living over the long term. Overall, the science suggests that people who consistently use good self-monitoring skills and apply the latest technologies were more motivated to shed unwanted pounds than those who tracked changes less often.

For anyone who struggles with weight control, Metabolic Research Center focuses on personalizing lifestyle interventions and provides tons of human support to ensure you are following strategies that truly meet your specific needs.