According to a new study released today by a team of scientists at the Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research in Portland, Ore., a notebook and your keenness in keeping the evidence of your daily meals may be the key to losing weight and having a healthier lifestyle.

The report was published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine and was conducted on 1,685 men and women aged 25 and older. All of the people who took part in the experiment were either overweight or obese and suffered of high blood pressure and increased blood cholesterol, two frequent health problems related to extra pounds. Furthermore, approximately half of them were African Americans.

More than two-thirds of the participants lost weight throughout the duration of the analysis, which was sustained by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. Overall, they discarded around 12 pounds each, not as much as the majority of dieters hope to achieve, but sufficient to diminish their blood pressure and cholesterol levels.

Their key to success was the fact that they attended weekly group gatherings where nutrition and behavior transformations were explained and promoted and, in addition to this, they kept a daily evidence of their meals and physical activities, writing them down in special “food diaries”.

Victor J. Stevens, a senior investigator at Kaiser Permanente and a co-author of the study, explained the influence of the notes upon the motivation of the dieter by stating that observing the amounts of food they had eaten, the dieters would learn to eat less and healthier in order to achieve their goal.