I’m not a big fan of diets, counting points, calories or anything else. But when it comes to weight loss, some of us struggle without any kind of guidance system in place. As simple as ‘eat real food until you’re full’ sounds, in reality it isn’t always that easy! 

For me, this is where tracking for weight loss comes in. It’s a different method for creating some boundaries and guidelines for yourself, managing portion sizes, keeping your focus on good habits and keeping your motivation up.

When you count points or calories you’re really not focusing on the nutritional quality of the food you’re eating. I know that some diets try and develop a system to encourage you to eat more healthy foods and less unhealthy foods, but the issue is that they often use outdated nutritional approaches, where low fat and high sugar foods that are lower in calories and points are encouraged.

At the end of the day, we all need an approach that can work for life. It has to be practical, enjoyable and motivational, and most of all, realistic!

The single most consistent habit I’ve maintained when it comes to weight loss and weight management has been tracking in some shape or form, because for me, it fits into my life easily. What I currently use is a note in Evernote (accessed on my phone and all my various devices) which I use as a meal planner / food diary / habit tracker. I’m a huge fan of Evernote and use it for everything, I have a great post coming up on organising your whole life with it!

When I developed a simple tracking sheet for my Bootcamp challenge at the start of the year, it went down a storm, and since then a lot of the wonderful ladies in my Facebook Group have developed their own versions of that basic sheet.

With tracking, what we’re aiming for is to track the habits that keep us healthy, the amounts of foods we eat and some level of treat smart treats. You can add to that a food diary as well if that works for you, but often using the tracking sheet will be enough.

I’ve developed two tracking tools for you to download for free! Both are based on the sheets I used for the Bootcamp I ran at the start of the year.

One tracking sheet is about good, solid, healthy habits and the second sheet ups the ante a little and would be great for supporting weight loss.

Get your FREE tracking tools here >>>

There’s a PDF version, an Evernote version and word doc version. Ladies I’ve got you covered!

I’d love to hear what you think of the tracking tools. Do you use any method of tracking in your health and wellbeing journey? What are your views on tracking?