Hey,

It's time for another instalment of the Vitamin––the weekly fitness newsletter that helps you be healthier, stronger, and leaner while navigating fitness bullshit.

How much food tracking is enough to manage body weight?

Most people should track their food intake, even if it's only for a short period of time. I've said this before, but food tracking is like 'training wheels' for nutrition; it teaches you about food and your own eating habits.

Once you've tracked for a while, you learn what foods are high in carbs, protein, and fats; what foods are good sources of key vitamins, minerals, and fibre; you learn how many calories are in your favourite restaurant foods; and you'll spend 15 minutes crying when you realise what an actual serving of peanut butter looks like.

So it's no surprise that people tend to lose weight or do a better job of maintaining their weight loss when they watch how much they eat.

For example, overweight or obese individuals who consistently monitor their diet (and body weight) lose more weight than those who don’t [1], and recording how much someone eats is positively associated with the amount of weight lost and/or maintained. [2]

But there's a trade-off.

Tracking your food intake can be a bit cumbersome, at least initially. It takes time and energy and requires some training to get a handle on things, but the upside is that you’re getting more information and accuracy about how much you're eating.

However, tracking itself can span a spectrum from tracking all the time to tracking some of the time. This raises the question of how much you need to track to lose weight and maintain that loss.

Well, a recent study set out to explore exactly that. Let's see what they found. [3]

What did the researchers do?

• The researchers explored potential thresholds for dietary self-monitoring during a 9-month weight maintenance period following a 3-month weight-loss program in 74 adults (50 female) with overweight or obesity.
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• The participants were encouraged to self-monitor daily body weight, dietary intake, and physical activity and report their adherence each week via a study website.
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• The researchers were interested in the relationship between how much someone tracked their diet and how much weight they regained.

What were the results?

• Greater self-monitoring was correlated with less weight regain when tracking ≥3 days/week, with the largest benefit observed for tracking ≥5 to ≥6 days/week.
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• Significant weight gain was observed when tracking ≥ 1 to ≥2 days/week.
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• No change in weight was observed when tracking ≥3 to ≥4 days/week, and weight loss was observed when tracking ≥5 or more days/week.

What does this all mean?

The findings of this study suggest that dietary tracking for at least 3 days per week was beneficial for supporting long-term weight maintenance. Increasing this to 5 or 6 days per week saw additional benefits for weight loss. On the flipside, tracking only 1-2 days per week was linked with weight gain.

On the topic of consistency, the authors noted that a 'slow and steady' approach (where participants tracked their diet 3-5 days/week consistently) was more effective for weight maintenance versus irregular tracking (7 days of tracking for a week or two followed by several weeks of only tracking once or twice per week). A finding supported by previous research where the total number of days participants tracked their diet only helped maintain weight loss if the tracking was done consistently (at least 3 days a week). [4]

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If you want to change a behaviour, you need to bring awareness to your actions and then be able to course-correct based on the feedback you receive. This is why the more frequently and consistently you can track your food intake, the more you increase the chances of losing weight (and maintaining weight).

Tracking once per week isn't enough to give you insight into how you're really eating since a single day isn't reflective of how you eat all the time. But if you bump this up to 3x/week, you have a bit more information on what a typical week of eating looks like. Bumping this up further to 4-5x/week provides more insight.

For example, if you're gaining weight but are certain you eat fairly well (I've lost count of the number of times I've heard this), tracking can help you see where you're going wrong. Maybe you're eating a bit more than you should be, or you're undoing your progress by consuming too many calories on the weekend.

Without quantifying your current behaviours, there's no way for you to know what you should be changing.

If you're currently trying to lose fat, tracking as much as you can will lead to better results than not tracking at all. But if you can't track every single day, that's fine as long as you're tracking consistently.

On the other hand, you might want to ease up on tracking once you've reached your goal and are looking to maintain, only opting to track for a few weeks if you find you're starting to gain more weight than you'd like.

The hard truth is that in today's environment, where we have easy access to calorically dense foods and are becoming increasingly sedentary, we're going to need to be intentional about controlling how much we eat and adjusting our behaviours accordingly.

Key points:

• Tracking how much you eat is key for fat loss and maintaining your progress at the end of a diet
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• A recent study found that dietary tracking for at least 3 days per week was beneficial for supporting long-term weight maintenance. Increasing this to 5 or 6 days per week saw additional benefits for weight loss. Meanwhile, tracking only 1-2 days per week was linked with weight gain.
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• Tracking how much you eat allows you to identify the current behaviours that are impacting your progress so you can adjust things accordingly.
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• Consistency is just as (if not more) important than how often you track. Tracking 3x/week consistently will provide more benefits than tracking for 7 days one week and only tracking 1-2x/week in the following weeks.
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• In today's environment, most people are going to need to track to get a handle on their nutrition.

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