Get Ready: Your Baseline Diet Diary

Before officially embarking on your weight-loss diet, learn about your regular meal patterns. That way you can spot easy tweaks to make to your eating habits that will help you lose weight. Pick three days this week to write down every single thing you eat—and that means every nibble, snack and leftover candy cane. At the end of this period, you'll see areas where you can improve either what you eat, when you eat, or how you eat. You can then choose the Eat Smart tips each week that are best suited to you. To get started, download this Diet Diary (.pdf) and print it out. Carry it with you all day. You can also track your eating and exercise habits on My Wellness Center.

• Log everything. Start writing down everything that you eat and drink from the minute you wake up on Day 1. Always note what time it is, whether you're eating a meal or snack, and exactly what and how much you ate.
• Be specific. If you eat one banana, that's fairly straightforward. But if you eat one omelet, you'll need to describe how many eggs were used, and if it was an egg-whites-only concoction, what vegetables you put in it, whether you cooked it in butter or canola oil, and other factors. If you eat processed or packaged foods, save the nutrition labels. If you eat at fast-food restaurants, look up menu items online for specific ingredients and other nutritional information.
• Stay status quo. Your first day of logging meals usually is easy, but soon you may not only start to forget, but you may feel an urge to change how you eat because you're writing it down. Resist this temptation! If you are eating a chocolate bar for breakfast, and a large shake and double fries for lunch, 'fess up! You'll be starting your diet later. For now, you just want to get an honest snapshot of your current status.
• Include all drinks. Remember to write down all drinks, especially if they have calories.
• Describe the scene. In the final column, add extra comments related to each meal. If you binged or skipped a meal, explain why. Did you eat a particular food because of a specific trigger? (Were you rushed so you ate cookies? Did you eat onion rings because your kids begged for them?)

You've completed your three-day Baseline Diet Diary: Now what? You now get to analyze the data. There are several ways to do this:

• Get a nutritional report card. Enter everything you ate and drank into a computer program to analyze the nutritional breakdown. You can do this yourself if you're so inclined on the USDA My Pyramid Web site. After registering, enter all the foods from your Baseline Diet Diary when prompted. The program will then analyze the nutrient content of your days. You'll get a complete breakdown on how many calories you ate, how much fat, protein and carbs was in your diet, and specific nutrients such as fiber, various vitamins and so on.
• Count the calories. Go to Calorie-Count.com and enter in each food and serving size from your Baseline Diet Diary. Jot down the approximate calories for each item and add them up at the end of each day. Then take an average of the three days to find out your typical caloric intake.
• Size up your menus. If you can't be bothered to get so specific, you can still spot eating trends that you can improve by answering these questions.

Go to Martica's Eat Smart Tips for Week 2.