7. Keep a Food Diary

One of the best ways to achieve any goal is to keep a diary chronicling your journey. In this case the goal is to lower blood pressure and avoid hypertension through healthier eating and, in many cases, weight loss. A meal plan is a great first step and a food diary is an amazing supplementary tool for helping you stay on target.

The basis of a food diary is fairly simple: you write down what you eat every time you have a meal or snack. This allows you to look back through the weeks, charting your progress and allowing you to plan your future meals. Food diaries allow you plan your grocery lists more accurately and also gives you the freedom to have the occasional “cheat” day; pizza, ice cream of some other food that you’d normally be cutting down on.

Do food diaries work? Studies resoundingly say yes! In some cases, study participants have been able to lose roughly double their counterparts weight while dieting with a food diary. Humans have a tendency to follow an out of sight, out of mind approach; a food diary keeps your meal plan front and centre.