Yup.... almost daily for the past 15 months (except for vacations). It is the ONLY way I can keep myself accountable for what I eat.
If I don't write it as I eat it, I FORGET! And then I get to the end of the day and don't realize that I have OVEReaten. I know that I should be able to remember over the course of a day, but I don't.
And along with writing, I still MEASURE many of my foods. Especially high-fat foods like peanut butter (although I use a peanut butter/tofu spread now that is lower in fat), salad dressings, ice cream, mayonnaise (which I rarely use), butter/margarzine.
And I still weigh and measure my other foods, at least every few days, just to keep me honest and to keep reminding myself what 1 cup of cereal looks like, and what 3 ounces of chicken breast looks like.
Looking back at 15 months worth of food diaries also reminds me of how far I have come. And it lets me see what I ate when I had a good week on the scale and what I ate when I had a bad week on the scale. It also lets me track any patterns I might have.
I did start tracking in January 2008 on my laptop and I kept that up until about May. But I don't keep my laptop in my kitchen and it was starting to get to be a pain to run to my computer everytime I had a snack. So I went back to the old-fashioned way of just writing in a journal. I use cheap spiral bound notebooks and I keep it on the kitchen counter with a pen. Sometimes I even grab it and keep it with me if I am going to be eating out and about for the day. Since it is JUST for my eyes, I also write about once a week about my how I am feeling about my weight, what I am feeling when I cheat, and how I am going to keep motivating myself or I give myself new challenges. So far I have filled about 4 spiral notebooks since last May. One page, per day, plus an extra page each week for my journaling. (Although admittedly I frequently lose blank pages to a kid in need of a quick sheet of homework paper!)
Anyhow, I can't IMAGINE being successful with my weight loss without some sort of tracking device... be it a "real life" journal, an on-line journal, a check mark system, or something. It is just TOO easy to fool ourselves about what we have or haven't eaten if it isn't written down. Good luck...........P