Keeping a food diary when you go on a diet is a very smart plan. The first advantage to keeping a food diary is that it will allow you to see exactly how many calories, carbohydrate, fat and protein grams you are eating. This information is critical when it comes to weight loss because it is of utmost importance that you are eating fewer than you burn per day to lose weight.

The next reason a food diary is great is because it helps you identify whether you are eating for reasons other than hunger. If you write in it how you are feeling before each time you eat then you can really get a clear picture of what's going on. If you find yourself eating a large portion of your daily meals when you aren't even that hungry, this might be a key factor you want to look at as it's likely holding your weight loss back.

Finally, use this notebook as a way to assess your overall progress. As you continue on with the plan, you can look back through it and see if as time has gone on you are getting better at choosing healthier choices to replace what you used to eat.

When making your logs into the notebook, the things you will want to write are:

the item you ate
how much you ate
when you ate it
how hungry you were (on a scale of one to ten for example)
any other emotions that may have been in effect

If you write each of these every time you eat you will find that this becomes a very useful tool in your weight loss journey.