How food tracking affects weight loss
Food tracking can be a valuable tool.
This information can guide portion sizes and food choices, whether someone is trying to manage their weight or just wants to eat better.
What’s more, tracking can be useful for gaining awareness of current eating behaviors—including where a person is doing well, and where they’re struggling.
However, according to researchers at the University of Connecticut, the University of Florida, and the University of Pennsylvania, tracking can also be a burden and hard to adhere to.
So they wondered: When it comes specifically to weight loss, how consistent do you need to be for food tracking to help?
An intriguing new study offers an answer to that question. (1)
How the study worked
The researchers recruited 153 participants for the six-month study.
The group was 70 percent female and highly educated, with an average weight of 90.1 kg (198 pounds) and an average BMI of 31.8 (classifying them as obese).
All participants were asked to follow the WW PersonalPoints program using the WW app and were sent digital Bluetooth scales that were synchronized with the app.
Participants also received:
weekly, coach-led, virtual workshops
weekly, one-on-one, virtual check-ins with a coach
access to a private social media group
This program guided participants through a weekly curriculum that provided them with “specific behavioral goals each week across four main pillars (food, activity, sleep, and mindset) to drive healthy habits.”
That is, they weren’t just told to track their food. They received ongoing support that emphasized behavior change.
After 24 weeks, the researchers calculated the number of days each participant logged their meals to see if their tracking behaviors predicted how much weight they lost.
What you need to know about WW PersonalPoints
When you read the term “food tracking” and also see that participants received food scales, you might assume they were weighing and logging every morsel.
But that wasn’t the case. They only tracked some foods, and instead of tracking calories, they tracked “points.”
From the scientists’ paper:
“All food and beverages are assigned a point value based on calories, saturated fat, unsaturated fat, added sugar, protein, and fiber.
Users are also provided with personalized lists of ZeroPoint Foods (ZPFs), which are foods that represent the cornerstone of a healthy dietary pattern (e.g., vegetables, fruits, lean proteins, beans, peas, lentils) but that do not need to be weighed, measured, or tracked.
ZPFs are high in diet quality, and, by relieving the user of having to track them and assigning them a points value of zero, the PersonalPoints plan nudges the user toward making higher quality diet choices.
Participants are given a daily and weekly points target and are instructed to track any food or drink with points on a daily basis.”
The upshot:
This isn’t what you might think of as traditional food tracking. It’s actually easier.
As a result, it may not represent what happens when someone uses a more conventional tracking method, in which they log everything they eat.
Plus, since participants only track certain foods, this limits the insights that can be gleaned about their overall eating behaviors. (This kind of feedback can help folks become more aware of eating behaviors that support and don’t support their goals.)
Just keep these points in mind as you consider the study's results.
What the study found
The researchers identified three distinct tracking behaviors:
Low trackers (22.9% of participants): These people logged their meals about 6 percent of the time, or less than one day a week over 24 weeks.
They initially logged their meals three days a week, on average. But they quickly lost interest, and had mostly stopped tracking halfway through the study.
Medium trackers (59.5% of participants): On average, these folks logged their daily meals 37 percent percent of the time, or about two and a half days per week.
But those tracking days were heavily front-loaded. Their enthusiasm steadily faded, and by the end, they were barely tracking at all.
High trackers (18.7% of participants): These study participants logged their meals a little more than an average of six days a week, or 88.7 percent of the time.
Check out the chart below, which provides an easy-to-understand snapshot of what happened.
Which brings us to the key question: Did weight loss correlate with how often they logged their food intake?
Not surprisingly, the most diligent trackers (18 percent of participants) lost the most weight, on average, as you can see below.
A few other interesting findings:
There was a 10-year gap between the average age of low and high trackers—37 for low trackers and 47 for high trackers.
The authors didn’t speculate as to why, but it might be worth pondering. For example, could changes in life circumstances or perspective have led to this shift? Does achieving a desired result feel more pressing as one ages and mortality and morbidity become more real?
Participants who were single, separated, widowed, or divorced were more likely to be low food trackers. Those married or living with a partner were likelier to be high-trackers.
This suggests that having social support could have played a role in people’s tracking consistency.
The highest-income participants were somewhat more likely to be high-trackers. At the opposite extreme, there was just one high tracker among the 25 participants who said they make less than $50,000 a year.
Might folks with lower incomes have increased financial strain or situations that make tracking consistently harder?
Takeaways
1. Food tracking isn’t easy for most people.
These results show that only about 20 percent of participants were able to track consistently for the entire six months.
To be sure, with only 153 participants, this was a relatively small study. But this finding matches what we tend to see with our clients.
Only a tiny percentage of folks are able to track for extended periods. Most people struggle to maintain the practice even if they start out enthusiastically and with great intentions.
And remember: Participants weren’t asked to log everything. In fact, they had a list of over 300 foods that they didn’t have to track.
(It’s also worth repeating that this wasn’t an overly representative sample of the entire population since it skewed female and highly educated.)
2. “High trackers” weren’t the only ones who lost impressive weight.
While the averages heavily favored the high trackers, on an individual level, the results were all over the place.
In fact, the participant who lost the most weight—nearly 30 percent of their initial body weight—only tracked their food intake around 20 percent of the days.
Another person lost about 20 percent of their body weight with almost no tracking at all.
See the chart below: The green line shows the trend of increased weight loss with more tracking. However, each dot represents one participant’s results.
These individual results show that success doesn’t require tracking. It depends on the person and their current situation.
These findings could also suggest that…
3. Short-term tracking may have longer-term benefits.
In our experience, even brief tracking may help someone become more aware of what they’re eating, thus positively influencing their future eating decisions.
Importantly, remember that all participants received 1-to-1 weekly coaching and group support. That might’ve helped some make positive behavior changes and better food choices independent of tracking.
4. Tracking isn’t for everyone—even those who do it consistently.
While food tracking can be a very effective tool for some people, it can also backfire.
This is especially true when it comes to calorie and macro counting. (Which is more complex and more involved than tracking PersonalPoints or using the hand portions system.)
Preliminary evidence suggests associations between calorie and macro tracking apps and three types of disordered eating.(2,3,4)
Binge eating: the overwhelming urge to consume as much food as possible, as fast as possible
Cognitive dietary restraint: feeling like you’re constantly making an effort to limit what you eat
Moralizing food: labeling what you eat as “good” and “bad” and attaching your self-worth to your food choices
Those at highest risk: People who tend to be overly self-critical, are prone to disordered eating, or have had an eating disorder in the past.
What’s more, for some people, tracking can take the joy out of eating.
For example, a person might be so worried about hitting their calories or macros—or not going over their PersonalPoints—that they struggle to find pleasure in the social aspects of eating. (Like sharing a good meal with family and friends.)
This is why we usually recommend that people count calories and macros for only short periods. We also reserve this practice for people who must achieve concrete body composition goals for their profession or athletic competition.
That said…
5. There are always exceptions.
From our experience, a small percentage of folks truly enjoy collecting calorie and macronutrient data (or PersonalPoints or hand portions) and monitoring changes in weight, body size, and health markers such as blood pressure and cholesterol.
They’re also usually emotionally detached from the numbers—seeing them as information rather than assigning them “good” or “bad” values.
For these people, tracking can feel empowering.
Which brings us back to how we started this review: Food tracking can be a valuable tool. It all depends on an individual’s personality, preferences, needs, mindset, and lifestyle. To figure out whether it’s for you, the best method is to try it.
To your tracking,
Michael Beiter
Certified Personal Trainer
PN L1 Sleep, Stress Management, and Recovery coach
References
Xu R, Bannor R, Cardel MI, Foster GD, Pagoto S. How much food tracking during a digital weight-management program is enough to produce clinically significant weight loss? Obesity. 2023 Jun 4.
Levinson, C.A., Fewell, L., Brosof, L.C. (2017) My Fitness Pal tracker usage in the eating disorders. Eating Behavior, 27: 14-16.
Linardon, J., Messer, M. (2019). My fitness pal usage in men: Associations with eating disorder symptoms and psychosocial impairment. Eating Behavior, 33: 13-17.
Simpson, C.C., Mazzeo, S.E. (2017). Calorie counting and fitness tracking technology: Associations with eating disorder symptomatology. Eating Behavior, 25: 89-92.
