Can This 15 Minute-A-Day Habit Really Help You Lose Weight?
Can This Daily 15-Minute Habit Really Aid in Weight Loss?
Can maintaining a daily food and beverage log help you lose weight? (Image via Getty Images )
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Put this in writing. It's so simple to fall in love, Linda Ronstadt has sung in a song. But weight loss? Not always so simple. In actuality, it might be pretty challenging.
So, be suspicious whenever someone claims to have discovered a simple way to reduce weight. Be extremely dubious. Consider Ted Kyle RPh, MBA's response after reading the University of Vermont news release "Is the most successful weight-loss method really so hard" as the Chair of The Obesity Society's Advocacy Committee.
It's not a good idea to take notes after falling off your skateboard, as the saying goes, "Write it when you bite it." The term really comes from the opening sentence of the press release, which read as follows: "If you want to lose weight, research suggests that the single best predictor of success is monitoring and logging calorie and fat consumption throughout the day — to "write it when you bite it."
Research on dietary self-monitoring that was just published in the journal Obesity was the subject of the news release. There were four writers from the University of Vermont, one from the University of Tennessee, one from the University of South Carolina, and two from the University of Vermont (Jean Harvey, Ph.D., RD, and Jeff Preist, Ph.D.) (Delia West, Ph.D.).
What does this "write" nonsense actually mean? Dietary self-monitoring mainly entails keeping track of your daily intake of food and liquids. According to this logic, you could eat more poorly than you know if you don't pay attention to what you are eating and drinking. You might not be aware of where or how to change your diet.
Obesity published a review of the outcomes from 142 participants in a 24-week online weight-control program, with an average beginning body mass index of 35.8 kg/m2, 90.8% of whom were female and 23.2% of whom were African Americans. Facilitated group sessions and, for some, motivational interviews performed via online chats were also incorporated into the curriculum.
Participants were urged to maintain a low-calorie, moderate-intensity diet and complete at least 200 minutes of moderate-intensity activity per week as part of the program. Additionally, participants in the study were instructed to log their daily food and beverage intake on a website.
Participants spent an average of 23.2 minutes per day during the first month of the study completing their dietary information on this website. By month six, this average had decreased to 14.6 minutes per day.
After six months, individuals who had dropped at least 5% of their body weight had visited the diet tracking website substantially more frequently (an average of 2.4 times per day) than those who had lost less than 5%. (an average of 1.6 times a day).
Comparing individuals who had dropped at least 10% of their body weight (2.7 times daily) to those who had lost less than 10% made the difference a bit clearer (1.7 times a day). Therefore, there was a link between using the website and losing weight: those who had lost more weight tended to use the website more frequently to register their food and drink consumption.
But does this actually support the claim that keeping track of one's daily caloric and fat consumption is "the single best predictor of success [in trying to lose weight]"? No. That would be like asserting that there is one single greatest indicator for finding true love, succeeding in your job, starting a boy band, or finding happiness. People come in a wide variety of highly unique forms. It's possible that what works for one individual won't for another.
Additionally, this study in no way establishes that weight reduction will inevitably result from food self-monitoring alone. It could be effective for some people, but many others need different kinds of therapies.
In most cases, unless you happen to be carrying an anvil, there isn't a single thing you can do to shed weight. Instead, a mix of strategies that target the different systems within and outside of you that could be causing weight gain and impeding weight reduction are needed to achieve sustained weight loss.
Additionally, connections do not establish cause and effect. There might be a lot of confusing variables at work. Perhaps individuals who saw more weight loss were more driven to utilize the website as a consequence. Perhaps additional elements, such as encouragement from their loved ones, friends, and coworkers, their settings, and their financial and employment circumstances, which aided in weight reduction also enabled them to spend more time keeping an eye on their diets.
You might not be aware of what you are consuming if you are preoccupied. Holly Ramer/AP Photo
This obviously does not imply that you should disregard such nutritional self-monitoring. Regardless of your weight, diet, health, or specific goals, keeping a food journal might be beneficial. It may be quite simple to lose track of what you eat and drink, regardless of who you are.
This is particularly probable when you are engaged in something essential, like watching cat videos, under stress, like when you are watching cat videos, or just generally distracted, like when you are watching cat videos.
Through dietary self-monitoring, you may have a better understanding of the nutrients that might be lacking in your diet as well as the excessive intake of sugar, salt, saturated fat, artificial additives, and other components. It can also assist you in avoiding circumstances when you might be more inclined to consume unhealthily.
The research does give you a general idea of how long it could take you to keep dietary records. According to the study's findings, you might only need to spend 15 to 23 minutes a day tracking your food, which is not a significant amount of effort. Therefore, as Harvey, the study's first author, said in the news release, keeping track of your food might not be "as difficult as people assume."
However, this cannot be stated as weight loss. Anyone who claims it's simple to lose weight is just wrong, and writing is not the secret to doing so. Any implication that losing weight is simple places undue responsibility on people who are having difficulty doing so. Stinson was wrong; Barney the dinosaur was correct. Every person is unique.
Despite doing everything "right," you can still not be able to reach your weight goals because of problems with the systems around you, such as a lack of social support, stress at work, a lack of availability to nutritious food, or your particular biology. Therefore, let's stop looking for an easy solution to the problem of being overweight since there just isn't one. And that's something you could record.
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