A new study has found that overweight and obese men and women who exercised and followed a healthy diet lost more weight if they kept a diary of what they ate.

Study subjects who kept track of their eating habits actually lost almost twice the weight – an average of 13 pounds – compared to those who did not.

A Canadian weight-loss specialist said the findings prove that one of the key long-term treatments for losing weight is learning how to modify food intake.

“Journaling helps us plot this course,” Dr. Robert Dent, founder of the weight loss clinic at The Ottawa Hospital, said Tuesday in an interview on CTV Newsnet. “So not only does it help us understand how to restrict certain foods, it helps us understand that we can have certain foods in moderation.”

The study was conducted by researchers at Kaiser Permanente’s Center for Health Research in Portland, Ore. The findings will be published in the August edition of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

The study’s 1,700 participants:

• Followed a diet rich in fruits and vegetables and low- or non-fat dairy products.
• Did moderate exercise for 30 minutes a day.
• Attended weekly support meetings.
• Kept a diary outlining the foods they ate and calories they consumed.

In the United States, two out of every three adults is either overweight or obese. The epidemic costs the country’s health-care system about US$93 billion.

Read the rest of this article by CTV’s Joy Malbon in Washingtom here.