The Key To Weight Loss: ‘Log Often, Lose More’

Obesity is now a common health issue.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), almost 40 percent of adults in the United States had obesity in 2015–2016.

This figure has been steadily increasing since 1999.

Most people are aware that obesity carries many health risks, such as heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and certain forms of cancer. Despite this, people tend to find it difficult to lose weight.

Studies have shown that one of the most effective weight loss strategies is dietary self-monitoring. This method requires a person to record all of the food and drink that they consume throughout the day, noting portion sizes and preparation methods.

People who are trying to lose weight are often less than enthusiastic about this method, believing it to be overly time-consuming. However, researchers at the University of Vermont in Burlington and the University of South Carolina in Columbia have found that monitoring your diet is highly effective and much easier than it seems.

“People hate it; they think it’s onerous and awful, but the question we had was: How much time does dietary self-monitoring really take?” says Jean Harvey, lead author of the study and chair of the University of Vermont’s Nutrition and Food Sciences Department. “The answer is, not very much.”

In total, 142 participants took part in the study. These individuals had already enrolled in the Internet Obesity Treatment Enhanced with Motivational Interviewing (iReach2) trial. They were mostly female, and 81 percent of them had obesity.

Dietary self-monitoring lasted for 6 months, after which the researchers calculated how long it took people each day and how successful this strategy was for weight loss.

The results feature in the journal Obesity in a paper called “Log Often, Lose More: Electronic Dietary Self‐Monitoring for Weight Loss.”

The researchers believe that this decrease could be due to two factors: the participants’ efficiency in logging their diet and the online program’s ability to predict regularly used words and phrases.

As Harvey explains, “We know people do better when they have the right expectations. We’ve been able to tell them that they should exercise 200 minutes per week. But, when we asked them to write down all their foods, we could never say how long it would take. Now we can.”

Neither the amount of time that people spent recording their diet nor the level of detail had much effect on weight loss success. Similar studies have shown that it is the frequency with which people log data that leads to a better outcome. Harvey’s research confirmed this theory.

Logging in at least twice a day was likely to result in more significant weight loss. However, it was “those who self-monitored three or more times per day and were consistent day after day” who were the most successful, says Harvey.

Harvey and colleagues hope that the study will encourage people to get on board with self-monitoring as a safe and effective weight loss technique. After all, taking 15 minutes a day to improve your health is not a massive ask.