Self-monitoring adherence and adolescent weight control efficacy

Aspects of food self-monitoring related to overweight adolescents' successful weight control remain unexplored. Behaviorally treated adolescents' food records were assessed for self-monitoring frequency, sufficiency, whether amounts and calories were recorded, and whether daily calories were summed. Greater recording sufficiency, operationalized as recording 5 or more different food/beverage items in a day, was the only self-monitoring aspect related to better weight outcomes. More recording and calorie summing were related to lower caloric intake at follow-up, whereas these aspects and sufficiency were related to dietary fat at follow-up. Recording sufficiency may be a critical component of overweight adolescents' food self-monitoring, although the direction of causality and potential spurious effects cannot be fully determined.