Breaking habits

On the weekend I was shown the new calorie app for iPhone that let's you input all the food you eat and then keeps track of how many calories you've eaten. It also sets you a calorie goal depending on your weight and amount of weight you want to lose.

I've never been a fan of calorie counting and never set calorie goals for my clients. Firstly it's near-on impossible to calculate how many calories someone is actually burning and counting calories goes against regulating your food intake according to your appetite, which is what you should be listening to when working out how much to eat and which naturally adapts to your activity levels.

Having said that I do think the tool is a great way to keep a food diary, which is something I am totally in favour of. Infact I should really keep a food diary myself for a couple of weeks - it's always surprising how much your diet can change and evolve over the course of a year and also which nasty habits can creep in. It was hula hoops before I undertook bootcamp in the New Year and now it seems to be nuts. Not that eating nuts is bad for you, when eaten in reasonable quantities, but I seem to be eating them all the time at the moment, in particular absentmindedly snacking on them at my desk.

If you do keep a food diary, whether it's on your iPhone or the back of an envelope, and notice there's something you eat every day, or in particularly high quantities, or just a food that you eat when you're bored, whether it's nuts, bread, crisps or anything else ... then the best policy is to go cold turkey and cut it out of your diet for two weeks. This will break the habit and force you to find alternatives, and then you'll usually find that when you introduce that food back into your diet you're less compelled to over-indulge.