6 Reasons to Track Food Besides Counting Calories

As you work towards your health goals with Lark, you will notice your Lark coach encouraging you log your meals.

There is far more to food tracking than calorie counting, so give it a chance before you run away. You can track food without turning into an obsessive calorie-counting machine. These are six reasons to track your food besides counting calories.

1 . Staying Aware

Similar to weighing yourself regularly, tracking your food helps you stay aware and hold yourself accountable. When you know that you will log your food and that Lark will know what you ate, you may be more likely to make the decision that you know is the healthy one. That thought of telling Lark about your meal or snack may be enough to motivate you to cut the cookie in half or add some tomato slices to your sandwich. Those choices add up.

2. Learning from an Expert

Lark is your personal nutritionist, so take advantage! Lark picks certain aspects of the meals and snacks you log, and gives you more information. You might learn new information about portion sizes or which foods are generally good weight loss choices. You could make discoveries about which foods are surprisingly high or low in calories or certain nutrients, and how to increase the "good" weight loss foods and decrease the "bad" ones.

3. Making Insights

Writing down (or entering) your foods and beverages creates a record. This record allows you (and Lark!) to go back and analyze what you ate. You might discover patterns that you never noticed, such as eating more when you are with certain people or feeling certain emotions, or eating out more often towards the end of the week when you run out of meals or home-prepared meals. Lark may also point out patterns linking certain choices, such as eating more vegetables in a week, to weight loss in that week.

4. Establish Weight Loss Habits

Lark helps you build healthy habits, and tracking is one of them. As you get more adept at logging your food, you will find yourself thinking ahead more often about your choices. It may become second nature to choose foods and beverages that you are pretty sure Lark will praise you for making. You might start to naturally reach for high-protein, high-fiber foods to fill up, and shy away from sugary and fried foods.

5. Gain Control

Bodies can be so unpredictable and that can be frustrating. Feeling out of control can even make you feel like giving up if you cannot figure out what you can do to get those extra pounds off of you. 

When you log your food, you can increase your control in your health journey. You may discover that while little blips and dips on the scale may seem (or be) random, the overall trends of gaining, losing, or maintaining rarely are. You may find them linked to what you have been eating recently.

You can also start to gain control in another way. As you log your food and get feedback, you will increasingly realize that you have the power to decide what goes into your body. Furthermore, as you log and learn, you will increasingly have the ability to see what is a good choice, and what is not.

6. Better Weight Loss Results

Research shows people who track their food lose more weight. Why would you go against the science when there is a good chance that you be among the trackers who benefit? Each pound you lose helps prevent chronic disease, so you might as well use every tool you can, including meal tracking with Lark.

Not only might you lose more weight, but people who track their food tend to keep off the weight better. Many people who are experienced in weight loss will tell you that losing weight is easy compared to keeping it off. Why not get extra help, through tracking, in keeping off those hard-fought pounds? Plus, that fits right in with Lark's goals of helping you establish healthy habits that will help you for the long haul. 

You are committed to your health. Why not make the most of the tools you have, take advantage of science, and log those meals!