It’s Friday night and you’re meeting friends for after-work drinks. Before you know it, you’re munching on chips and other deep-fried snacks in between sips of your third drink. A late supper follows. The next morning your roommate makes you a generous fry-up of bacon and eggs to cure your killer hangover. Saturday night turns into a repeat of Friday, and Sunday has you wondering how you unintentionally ruined your plans to eat healthily.

Sound familiar? While most of us would prefer to erase these unhealthy slips from our memories, scientists have found a powerful reason why we shouldn’t.According to a recent study published in the American Journal Of Preventive Medicine, people who keep a daily record of everything they eat and drink can dramatically improve their chances of weight loss. By keeping a food diary (Bridget Jones-style), dieters were able to lose twice as much fat over a period of six months. Not bad, huh?

“Food diaries can be helpful when trying to monitor our diets,” Dr Jessica Wilson says. “People tend to be stricter with themselves when they have to write it down. By looking at what you usually eat, it can be easier to work out which foods need to be cut and whether anything is missing from your diet.”

Dear diary

The beauty of a food diary is that it’s virtually cost-free and, unlike other dieting crazes, it works! You can record everything you eat and drink (including approximate amounts, kilojoules, and time consumed) in a notebook or you can download one of the many free online diaries (try toli.com.au or calorieking.com.au).

Nutritionist Desi Carlos says there are many benefits of recording your daily food intake. “Besides being a good monitoring tool for the individual, a food diary also allows you to be personally accountable for your health,” Carlos says.

“It’s a good way of identifying unhealthy meal patterns and whether you have balanced your food groups and spread them across the day properly. Other things to look out for may include the number of times you dine out and the amount of alcohol you consume through the week.”