The best weight loss tool to help you get serious about losing weight has little to do with food or exercise equipment. Sure, those things are important, and certainly, healthy food will need to be at your disposal, but what I’m referring to is a habit tracker.
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What Is A Habit Tracker
Whether you call it a log, diary, or tracker, it is the best weight loss tool to help you get serious about losing weight. This type of weight loss tool is for your eyes only and is formatted to help you organize and track your eating and exercise habits. There’s sometimes space available to track your mood.
There are a few different variations of habit trackers to help you record your actions starting from day one of your weight loss journey. Writing down the details of your weight loss journey from the start can help you follow through with your commitment to your weight loss goals.
How To Choose The Right Habit Tracker
From free apps to journals, habit trackers are structured in a way that helps you plan your weight loss journey with clarity. The act of writing down your meal plan and workouts engages your brain and solidifies your intention to lose weight. Therefore, the best weight loss tool to help you get serious about losing weight, in my opinion, is a physical tracker.
Using a physical tracker will help reinforce your intention to lose weight on a daily basis which is most important when you are starting a weight loss journey.
You can download my Free Healthy Habits Tracker below to help you get started on your weight loss journey today!
The Reason Why A Habit Tracker Is The Best Weight Loss Tool
- It gives you insight into how you got to your current weight. Your current weight is a result of the choices you made in the previous days, weeks, and months. When you think about starting a weight loss journey it’s likely because you aren’t content with your weight, how you look or maybe you just want to be healthier in general. It’s a good idea to start using a healthy habit tracker about one week before you begin your weight loss journey. Once you start writing down the kind of food you typically reach for, you’ll immediately become aware of how you got to your current weight.
- It brings awareness to the choices you make in the present moment. The main reason a habit tracker is the best weight loss tool to help you get serious about losing weight is that it opens your eyes to what you are actually doing that affects your weight loss results. With a habit tracker, you don’t need to rely on memory, and you eliminate excuses. It’s common to underestimate how much and how often you eat non-nutritious food. I have been guilty of this many times in the past. In my mind, I’m eating appropriately, but the habit tracker tells a different story when I actually record every bite.
- It eliminates unconscious or unintentional eating. We have established that if losing weight is your intention, you must be aware of your food choices. But did you know that you can overeat food that is good for you also? A habit tracker is the best weight loss tool to help you get serious about losing weight because it brings attention to your behavior around all food. From what you eat, to the frequency, duration, and intensity of any activity you engage in, it can all be listed in a tracker.
Where you begin your weight loss journey is just as important as where you are at the end of it. Therefore it’s important to remember that a habit tracker is a tool and is only part of your weight loss strategy. It is meant to help you see what is or isn’t working in real-time.
You can then adjust your strategy to ensure that you successfully reach your weight loss goal as well as maintain your weight down the road. A habit tracker is the best tool to help you become the best version yourself!
5 Reasons Why A Habit Tracker Can Help You Get Serious About Losing Weight
1. A Habit Tracker Keeps You Focused.
When you are focused on your weight loss journey, there’s literally nothing that can stop you from reaching your weight loss goals. To stay focused means you have an awareness of your thoughts, feelings, and behavior. It means you are keeping your desire to lose weight in front of your mind. Your weight loss goal is the filter through which all of your food choices are viewed.
2. A Habit Tracker Reveals Your Patterns.
After you have been tracking your healthy habits for a while, whether or not you’re having weight loss success your tracker will reveal your patterns. This information is valuable at the start of your weight loss journey because you’ll see the baseline patterns that contribute to your current weight. The definition of insanity comes to mind and can be applied in this instance.
Doing the same one size fits all diet over and over again and expecting that one day something will click and “poof” the weight will fall off is pure insanity. If you are recording your food intake and exercise faithfully, you can look for patterns in your behavior that serve you or work against you.
3. A Habit Tracker Keeps You Stay Accountable.
Anyone can benefit from keeping a habit tracker. If you aren’t recording what you eat, you have no way of knowing for sure what stalls your weight loss efforts. It can be hard to admit, but we all tend to downplay how much we eat.
Relying on your memory during your weight loss journey isn’t the best way to stay accountable. This is one of the best reasons to use a habit tracker when you begin a weight loss journey and I believe is the reason I was able to lose 100lbs in 2017.
Remember, what gets measured can be improved.
4. Habit Trackers Can Serve As A Reference.
It’s normal to be super excited at the start of a weight loss journey. Depending on how much weight you have to lose, after a few weeks or months, you may start to get tired or bored with the meals you prepare. Exercise routines can get a little monotonous too, especially if you aren’t a fan of the type of exercise you choose to do.
Boredom with exercise and/or your meal plan is the reason a lot of people just quit their weight loss journey. However, having a habit tracker gives you a way to look back to the first weeks of your weight loss journey when it was new and exciting. Seeing in writing the attention you gave to the details at first, gives you a renewed perspective about your reasons for starting your weight loss journey in the first place.
Rather than throw in the towel on your weight loss goals, you can rekindle your enthusiasm by looking back at the meals you ate and the exercise you did that helped you make progress with your weight loss.
5. Tracking Your Progress Can Boost Your Confidence.
It’s tempting to be hard on yourself when you hit a weight loss plateau or even see a few pounds gained, which is a common complaint of many people when they are on a weight loss journey. We all want to see continuous losses on the scale but weight loss is not linear. Using a habit tracker to review your journey and helps you see the bigger weight loss picture.
Progress is gradual on a weight loss journey and a habit tracker is a perfect tool to use for giving yourself the pat on the back. Seeing how you persevered despite what happened in your life gives you the confidence that you need, and the determination to keep going with your weight loss efforts.
I promise you, looking back on all your hard work and seeing how far you have come on your weight loss journey will never get old!
What To Look For In A Habit Tracker
The best trackers are formatted to include sections to write in your weight loss goals, meal times, snacks, and water intake. A section to write in your exercise activities is sometimes included.
I’m a fan of any habit tracker that includes an area to record your mood. This is helpful to have so that you can look back on how you managed a challenging day or week of eating.
The Best Times To Write In Your Habit Tracker
When you write in your habit tracker is important of course, but not as much as making sure that you actually do it. It doesn’t require much time to track your behavior or meals, but if you want to be as accurate as possible, you need to figure out when your thinking is most likely to be clear.
For example, my habit tracker is usually 90% filled in for the next day by the time I go to bed. I prefer to do it in the evening when I’m done eating for the day because it’s the best time for me to plan what I want the following day to look like. This way at the start of every day I can use my tracker just as a guide to follow for my meals and snacks.
You can always change something in your tracker if you need to, but starting the day with a plan is important.
You will have to see what time of day works for you to record your meals and/or exercise. I found that I do better when I start the day with a plan because I’m not as accurate if I’m trying to recall what I ate all day.
Pre-track Your Meals And Exercise Plan
You don’t have to cook every day to be successful on a weight loss journey. However, it does help to have a go-to meal plan strategy so that you have options. Cooking a few large batches of food for the family will give you plenty of options for meals throughout the week.
Habit Trackers are the best weight-loss tool because they help you make keep track of simple meal ideas. When you have a plan for your meals, you will spend minimal time in the kitchen. For instance, you can roast a chicken, baking a sheet pan of salmon and make a gigantic batch of turkey burgers to have on hand. Any of these proteins will pair nicely with a large pot of brown rice, quinoa, steamed broccoli or roasted vegetables.
Putting It All Together
Now that you have a tracker and a meal plan, (the what), the question remains about how much food you should eat (the how). Additional essential weight loss tools to help you get serious about losing weight are a food scale, and a set of measuring cups, and spoons.
Understanding portion control is what helped me at the beginning of my weight loss journey and still helps me today. I don’t count calories but I do measure portions. There are countless diet plans that tell you that counting calories is necessary for weight loss. I suggest consulting a nutritionist if you have no idea what your food intake should be.
I have a pretty good idea based on my height and weight where I should be with how much food to eat every day. Keep in mind your activity levels also influence how much food you need to eat in order to lose weight.
My preference is to weigh proteins, fats and complex carbohydrates because they are calorie-dense and I don’t want to overeat these foods. The Calorie Fat & Carbohydrate Counter By The CalorieKing is an awesome reference that not only provides a list of foods with their calorie counts, but also their serving sizes.
Using Your Habit Tracker To Plan Your Workout Sessions
Planning when you will exercise is as important as meal planning. When you are starting out on your weight loss journey, your exercise plan can be decided once at the beginning of the week. This is only if you want to add exercise.
For instance, if it’s your first week of using a habit tracker and you haven’t exercised in months or years, you may want to be cautious about the type of exercise you do. Once you check with your doctor and get the green light to workout, pencil in a 15-20 minute walk for 3 days out of the week.
Walking is the best way to get started with exercise and will also help you increase your fitness level. Besides, it’s so easy and there are so many benefits you won’t even feel like you’re exercise!😉
I’m making sure I at least get a minimum of 20 minutes of walking for 3 days out of the week. For weight-bearing exercise, I’m fitting in 15-minute yoga sessions a few days per week as well.
Conclusion
Undoubtedly, a habit tracker is the best weight loss tool to help you get serious about losing weight. You can choose to use it only while you are losing weight, but it obviously can be advantageous to use one indefinitely. Either way writing down your meals and activity can bring awareness to your behavior and will provide an in-depth perspective about what you need to work on.
A habit tracker will help you begin your weight loss journey armed and ready for what’s ahead. You’ll be able to navigate how to deal with special occasions like dinner parties, holiday dinners, or any celebratory gatherings.
Try to Keep in mind that the purpose of using a habit tracker is not to judge yourself for not being perfect on your weight loss journey. It’s strictly to be used to bring your awareness to the habits that do not serve you and will help you identify the actions that are helping you succeed in losing weight. Think of using a habit tracker as a tool to take your self-care up to a whole new level!
You can download my Free Healthy Habits Tracker below to help you get started on your weight loss journey today!
Have you ever used a healthy habit tracker to help you in your weight loss journey? I would love to hear from you in the comments!
Sources:
https://www.self.com/story/heres-the-best-way-to-start-a-daily-food-log-for-weight-loss
I am surely going try this. Thanks for sharing! 🙂
A habit tracker is definitely a great way to bring awareness to things you don’t even realize you’re doing, and then you can make a change. Thanks!
I agree!