Scientists Swear By This Weight-Loss Trick That Only Takes 15 Minutes a Day

You won't believe how easy it's.

If someone told you retain track of each single thing you eat while you're on a weight-loss plan, the primary thing to pop into your head would probably be, I don't have time for that. Well, you would possibly want to re-evaluate. Turns out, people that log what they eat for just a couple of minutes a day are those watching that number on the size go down.

A new study published within the journal Obesity had about 150 people track what they ate for 6 months as a part of a weight-loss program. By the top, those that lost the foremost weight spent slightly below quarter-hour each day on the average logging their intake. Their motto: "Write it once you bite it."

Just think, quarter-hour is half as long together episode of your favorite Netflix show. it is a fraction of the time you spend scrolling through social media in the dark or stressing out about things that are out of your control (let's be honest, we all do it).

The study, conducted by researchers at the University of Vermont and therefore the University of South Carolina, found those that lost 10% of their weight (aka the foremost successful of the bunch) spent a mean of 23.2 minutes recording their intake a day during the primary month of the program. But by the sixth month, that point dropped to 14.6 minutes.

Recording their intake meant "recording the calories and fat for all foods and beverages they consumed, also because the portion sizes and therefore the preparation methods," consistent with the study.

Spending longer recording didn't equal more weight loss. However, how often an individual logged into the tracking program actually did.

"Those who self-monitored three or longer per day, and were consistent day after day, were the foremost successful," Jean Harvey, chair of the Nutrition and Food Sciences Department at the University of Vermont and therefore the lead author of the study, said during a handout. "It seems to be the act of self-monitoring itself that creates the difference-not the time spent or the small print included."

Harvey and her team hope the study encourages dieters to use tracking apps and to understand they are not nearly as time consuming as everyone seems to think. "People hate it; they think it's onerous and awful, but the question we had was: what proportion time does dietary self-monitoring really take?" Harvey said. "The answer is, not considerably."