The Ultimate Diet Log

by Suzanne Schlosberg, Cynthia Sass

Suzanne Schlosberg, the creator of The Ultimate Workout Log teams up with nutrionist Cynthia Sass, the New York Times bestselling coauthor of Flat Belly Diet!, for The Ultimate Diet Log, an essential 26-week diet log that can be tailored to any eating regimen and can help drive long-term weight loss. Experts believe that simply being aware of what you eat is half the weight-loss battle. The Ultimate Diet Log is a goal-oriented daily diary for tracking food choices, eating habits, and exercise patterns for anyone interested in losing weight, firming up, or just eating better. With its accessible, flexible format that can accommodate any eating plan, this indispensable log helps readers chart their way through the four stages of food awareness to permanent weight loss and improve their daily eating habits for life.Features 5-day initial assessment* 3-step plan to narrow the focus and set smart goals* 26-week daily diary* Healthy eating tips* Charts to track progress* And more

304 pages, Paperback

First published January 5, 2009

About the author

Suzanne Schlosberg is a top health, nutrition, and parenting writer. A former senior editor of Shape magazine, she is the author or coauthor of ten books, including Fitness for Dummies, The Ultimate Diet Log, and The Essential Breastfeeding Log. Her articles have appeared in Health, Ladies' Home Journal, Parents, and Parenting, among others. She resides in Bend, Oregon."

Reviews

[Hillary · Rating 5 out of 5]

There were just so many things I liked about this book for starters, one of my favorite quotes is by a business man named Peter Drucker and he said “What gets measured gets managed”. That is what this book is all about. The authors start out by arguing the need for tracking what we eat by saying that Americans lie to themselves and to others about how much they eat. For example, in a telephone survey of 12,000 people 73 percent of obese respondents told the interviewers that their diet was either “very healthy” or “somewhat healthy”. The authors also cite a Cornell study in which researchers turned a hidden camera on patrons at an Italian restaurant and then, five minutes after the meal asked how much bread they’d just eaten. The camera showed that they’d eaten nearly 30 percent more bread than what they thought and 12 percent denied having eaten any bread at all. The author Cynthia Sass is a dietitian and she consistently found that her clients believed they ate more nutritiously that they actually did.
I myself am guilty of this. I always thought I ate “healthy” but when I wrote down what I ate and gave it to a friend to look over she said you eat less than 1800 calories a day and only 2-3 servings of fruits and veggies a day. This again happened with my headaches. I thought I had a couple a week, until I wrote them down and found I was having 7-5 migraines a week. My point is that sometimes we just don’t know what is going on until we see it on paper. So the first part of this book doesn’t try to get you to change anything, it just tries to get you to take an honest look at yourself and know what you are actually eating.
The second part of the book again doesn’t focus on the ‘what not to eat’ it really focuses on small goals for the week or day and balance. Goals may include, -don’t skip breakfast, drink water instead of diet coke, add veggies to eggs, bring lunch instead of go out, go to a spinning class this weekend, switch to 99% lean ground beef. Cynthia also spends a section of the book and a section in the Diet log on hunger and fullness and encourages you to focus on being “perfectly satisfied”, to feel energized after each meal.
The only things that I really disagreed with were when the author called for a weight check every day and to skip a multivitamin. I’m sorry, but many of you who know me know that I have a passionate love/ hate, but mostly hate relationship with my scale the number that it reflects can literally break me, and as for the multivitamin, well I just don’t think that my food packs in the
833% of Biotin and 2500%Vitamin B-6 as my GNC mega multi daily vitamin does. But overall it was a great book, it is a great diet log, whenever I get slightly off track I pull this out and get right back on and start to feel better, I highly recomend it.

[Kara · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think it will be helpful. To be updated August 1, 2013.

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EDIT: August 1, 2013:

As promised, 26 week update.

I’m only down 8 pounds, but down is better than up, and, looking at things big picture, its going well.

The journal itself was pretty good – I was doing really well but was thrown off track when I moved, put the book in a box, couldn’t find it right away, and by the time I dug it out again, it was really hard to be motivated to start again, mostly because it’s hard to eat healthy while the kitchen is in various boxes, and the book just didn’t pull me back in.

When it comes to food journal, any 99 cent spiral notebook from the discount store will do if you just want to write down what you eat.

The selling point for food journals like these is everything else in the book besides the space to note down food.

This book has a good structure and set up, with a great opening section with nutrition information, but all the factoids on each page can be depressing rather than enlightening, highlighting scary facts about Americans and American food.

Loved the weight chart in the back, and loved the area to make notes about daily and weekly updates, food or non food related, dealer’s choice.

So overall, yes, would recommend this as a good food journal to someone looking to seriously take a look at what they are eating and looking for advice and structure to improve their food consumption.