Your diet profile

By keeping a food diary you can work out what type of diet will most suit you and what kind of changes you need to make to your eating habits to make them healthy. A food diary should contain EVERYTHING that you eat and drink for a whole week, with absolutely nothing missed out. It should also list what time you ate, how the food was prepared and how you felt after eating. This information will help you to work out where you are going wrong with your eating habits and what you can do to improve them. For example a food diary will show:

 

·         If you are eating your five portions of vegetables per day. Vegetables provide an abundance of nutrients as well as minerals, vitamins and antioxidants so it is vitally important that you get enough.

·         If you are eating too much junk food such as takeaways, processed foods and ready meals.

·         If you are eating the same things on a daily basis. A lack of variety will quickly kill a diet and so you should try to eat different types of food each day.

·         If you are a salt or sugar junkie. Salt and sugar are often disguised in foods and you will only realise they are there if you make a point of reading the labels. It might be worth collecting the labels from the foods you eat during a single day so that you can get a picture of how much salt ad sugar you consume in an average day.

·         If you eat enough raw vegetables and fresh fruit each day compared with the amount of non-fresh food you eat. The ratio should be at least half and half however in reality it is normally tipped quite dramatically in the favour of non-fresh foods.

·         If you are drinking enough water each day. Dehydration can cause you to put weight on and so it is important to drink at least six to eight glasses of water each day. Also thirst is often mistaken for hunger and so you should try having a glass of water before you turn to a snack.

·         If you are a caffeine addict. Many people don’t realise how much coffee and other caffeine-containing products they drink until they keep a diary. It may be a great pick-me-up in the short term however in the long term it can make you irritable, tired and even incontinent.

·         How many snacks you eat each day and if they are healthy snacks. Again most people don’t realise that they snack quite so much until they write down exactly what they eat each day. Snacking is habitual and many people don’t even remember doing it.

·         What proportion of your diet is protein, what proportion is carbohydrate and what proportion is fat. It will also show if you are getting enough fibre each day and if you are getting the required amounts of vitamins and minerals.