Keeping a food diary is an effective way to keep track of the number of calories that you eat everyday. And whether you are trying to lose weight or simply maintain a healthier diet, a food diary can help you out.

In addition to keeping your own written diary, you can also use Fitday's online journal to track your calories. By doing this, you won't have to look up the number of calories in your meals and you can have the convenience of quickly tallying up your calorie count for each day. Regardless, there are a number of reasons that you should start keeping a food diary today. Here are 5 of them:

This is one of the most underrated aspects of keeping a food diary. You probably think that you know exactly what you eat everyday. You probably even think you could guess the number of calories that you take in through your meals. But the truth is that most people eat more than three times everyday and most of their extra calories probably come from eating between meals. Especially if you are trying to lose weight, keeping track of these calories is what's most important.

By seeing exactly what you eat everyday, you can begin to cut certain types of food out of your diet. You might be surprised to see that some foods that you thought were healthy actually have the highest amount of calories according to your food journal. By taking this into account, you can cut these calories by finding healthy alternatives for your diet.

At first, you should use your food diary to keep track of the meals that you eat. But over time, you can actually use your food diary to plan out basic meals and snacks in order to create a more balanced diet.

Whether you're not getting enough vegetables into your diet or you're skipping lunch a little too often, your food diary serves as a record of everything that you do--and do not--eat. Knowing that you are deficient in certain food groups can be helpful and can help you plan out your diet a little better than ever before.

You may not realize it right away, but over time, your food diary will actually make you want to eat healthier. Every time you write down a food that has a lot of calories in it, you'll want to avoid doing it in the future. Your food diary can actually help you to look at food in a whole new way. It's one of the best reasons you should want to start a food diary today. Your food diary will not help you enjoy new foods, but it will give you a reason to try to cut back on your calories.