The #1 Habit Fit People Share To Lose Weight

If your goal is to lose weight, then tracking your progress is just as important as listing your tasks.  For example, if you are following an exercise program to reach a fitness goal, you’ll find that writing down your progress on each exercise day helps keep you more motivated.  For people trying to lose weight, simply writing down everything you eat has been shown to be a highly effective weight loss tool, even if you’re not actually dieting!

Several studies have shown that when a person writes down the foods they eat regularly, they lose weight at a higher amount than those who don’t keep a food diary.  A study performed at Kaiser Permanente’s Center for Health Research and published in 2008 found that the more the subjects tracked the foods they ate, the more weight they lost. While this is a great tip if you want to lose some weight, I mention it here because I think it applies to the progress improvement you can see in any goal you undertake by writing down your actions and accomplishments.  Weight loss is just a convenient way to measure the effect of this over long periods of time for challenging goals.

Journaling your progress keeps it in the forefront of your mind.  In the case of food, people who track their food consumption in a food journal are more aware of the food they eat.  This awareness makes it easier to maintain controls during tough times and feel the reward of sticking with their goals.  Tracking exercise progress has a similar effect, in my experience.

People have long debated whether it’s better to measure progress frequently or occasionally.  Some believe that it’s better not to focus too much on tracking progress, because it could make people obsessive (especially about goals like weight loss).  Others argue that consistent monitoring is more effective, because it maintains awareness.  In fact, research in this field indicates that frequent monitoring is far more effective than occasional monitoring!