A team of American researchers have shown that people who take photographs of their meals stick more carefully to their healthy eating plan than those who do not take a photo. It seems that with pictorial evidence of what they are eating, people are more aware of the quality and quantity of what they put on their plate.

Food diaries – where daily consumption is recorded in a notebook – is often recommended to help people avoid overeating and snacking on unhealthy foods. Past studies have shown that dieters who write down what they eat lose more weight than those who simply try to eat more healthily. In one University of Pennsylvania study dieters were given a healthy eating plan and told to exercise for 30 minutes a day and monitored for a year. Those who kept a faithful note of what they ate lost around 16 to 19 pounds but those who did not keep a diary lost only 6 pounds on average.

 

Writing down what you eat is clearly an effective self-help tool if you have weight to lose, but this latest research published in the International Journal of Consumer Studies clearly shows that photo diaries may be a more accurate, effective and powerful way to avoid unhealthy eating. This may be because written diaries are often completed long after a meal and do not provide as powerful a reminder of the size and quality of the meals and snacks as a photo. Overall this latest study has revealed that dieters demonstrate greater awareness of their diet when they take and then look at the photos of what they have eaten than when they reflect on their written notes.

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 1st, 2008 at 3:40 am and is filed under In the News, Weight Loss. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.