I started tracking everything I eat. MyFitnessPal* makes it much easier, combined with buying a scale and leaving it on the counter (meaning I weigh every serving of everything I eat). I don't find it particularly arduous (been doing it since ~April last year) and it has made a noticeable impact on my waistline and my shopping bill (forced me to plan my meals to an extent).
* Not affiliated with MyFitnessPal, but they provide a nice mobile app (iOS at least) and a HUGE database of foods and recipes. If you cook from BBC Good Food (as I do regularly0 you can normally find the recipe entered w/ calories and macro nutrients. I dislike the amount of tracking they perform, but no other software comes even close to offering the functionality they offer.
I have also been using that app and I am very happy with the results. I had a couple of false starts, but now have gotten into a nice rhythm. The trick is to not judge or criticize yourself during data entry. Analysis is a completely separate phase.
Seeing a few months of data really helped me think differently about my diet. My mother programmed all her children to be "comfort eaters," and when I saw that the bulk of my too many calories were coming from "comfort foods," it helped me tackle the situations and stress responses that triggered non-nutritional eating.
I am not suggesting that MyFitnessPal is the only tool/process/technique that could lead one to these revelations. It is the tool that led me to those revelations, so I am a happy customer. (Also not affiliated.)
I also use MyFitnessPal and while it can be a slight pain to use sometimes it really is best in class. Reminders to log food, save full meal for reuse, huge DB of food, ability to enter new foods, copy from yesterday (great when you eat the same thing for breakfast almost every morning). It also integrates into my Withings WiFi scale (which I HIGHLY recommend), I love just stepping on it in the morning and knowing it will all be synced up and ready for me to access from the API/Web/Mobile app.
I liked MFP, but I do think it's gotten crappier in the last few months (possibly since the UA purchase? Not sure of the exact timing there). I just switched to LoseIt.
For sure. It's become a lot slower, the targeted ads are slightly unpleasant, and they really try and push their premium offering... Id love an open source alternative, but the problem is the food database (imho)
* Not affiliated with MyFitnessPal, but they provide a nice mobile app (iOS at least) and a HUGE database of foods and recipes. If you cook from BBC Good Food (as I do regularly0 you can normally find the recipe entered w/ calories and macro nutrients. I dislike the amount of tracking they perform, but no other software comes even close to offering the functionality they offer.