Call it what you want; trimming the fat, slimming down, dieting, taking off some pounds…whatever. One thing that all successful weight loss programs need to include is a journal. Unfortunately most of them gloss right over this step. If you can’t easily find out where you are going wrong (or right) changing your habits is going to be very hard.

Basically, anything that can’t be measured (and you need records to measure) can’t be improved upon. The idea is that you have to know what is causing your weight gains before you can find the most successful weight loss programs to take it off.

Weight loss is a one-step-at-a-time process. To get healthy results that are fast and long lasting, we need to go back to the basics. In other words, we need to find out what we are doing wrong before we can change.

The smartest beginning step is…keeping a food journal – daily. It can be complex and filled with masses of details or you can keep it simple, clean and basic. By keeping track of your daily eating habits, your food journal will give you some pretty surprising insights and help you stick with whichever of the successful weight loss programs you decide to use.

The simplest and most basic journal is one that just lists your daily intake of food. Of the wide variety of data you could include, this is the easiest but will still give you unexpected results. You’ll quickly start to see previously unnoticed eating patterns. You’ll uncover bad habits you may have never realized you had!

In any area of our life, weight included, it’s our daily habits and patterns that kill us. Or make us succeed. We do things without giving it a second thought. Once you begin your food journal and start writing down everything, your good AND bad habit patterns will start to emerge. Once they are exposed, you’ll find it is pretty simple to find the successful weight loss programs that will work in your specific case.

Fat, calories, fiber, protein, portion sizes and other nutrients are all data items that are included in many journals. It’s definitely a lot of work, but the gaping holes you’ll quickly discover in your healthy eating habits make it worthwhile. It won’t take long to see the mistakes in why, when, how much and what you eat.

If you want to make it more of a diary type format, you could include your inner feelings about your weight loss efforts. How your program is affecting you on a daily basis. What triggers make you have cravings or make you want to eat for reasons other than hunger. The bottom line is, there are many formats you could follow, but keep in mind, the journal is yours and only for you. You can record anything YOU find useful.

You don’t have to worry about keeping your food journal under lock and key or hidden away like a traditional diary. Reading a list of what you eat every day is not something that anyone is likely to want to do. It’s not what anyone would consider tabloid fodder. (Unless your life IS featured in the tabloids. In that case, hide it away.)

You could keep your journal on your computer. Any word processing program will work. You could even make an Excel type spread sheet. But in either case, be sure to keep the icon on your desktop so it doesn’t get lost in your computer. No computer? A pad of paper and a pencil are every bit as good as computer or a fancy leather bound journal. Save your money and use whatever tools work best for you.

You could keep your food journal on a laptop or palm pilot, you could use a voice recorder or slip a notebook into your bag during the day…whatever works best for your lifestyle. The key is to make it something that you will keep up on a daily basis.

Keeping up with your journaling (and reviewing it every week) is the key to keeping track of your progress and finding the reasons for when you get off track. As a weight loss tool, your journal is far more valuable than your scale could ever be.

Hitting certain weight loss goals and plateaus deserves a reward. (No, not an ice cream bar.) Buy some of those little gold star stickers – the ones that first graders are so fond of. Award yourself one whenever you reach a goal. Seems dumb, but looking through your journal and seeing all those stickers can become pretty important to you. You deserve a big “ATTABOY” or “ATTAGIRL” and your journal will prove it! Set some sort of goal that can be attained every day. Soon your journal will be filled with – highly motivating – gold stars. Try it, it works.

If you back slide, study your journal and find out what went wrong! It’s all there! You can fix your mistakes and move on to the next gold star.

Take your journal with you when you go to the doctor. They can offer advice and double check to be sure that you are staying with a healthy and safe program. BTW – Never start an exercise or weight loss program without getting checked by a doctor.

Though it requires some extra effort, a food journal works wonders for the people that take the time to make one. As a major weight loss shortcut, it can’t be beat. Start keeping your food journal today.