The use of a food diary cannot be underestimated. It will help you to become more conscious of your eating habits and highlight any problem areas you have. You can list what you have eaten and your motivations for it. You should also outline any exercise you have taken, or not taken, and again describe how you were feeling prior to, during and after the activity. You can also use your diary to set out a plan for the coming week. You just tell yourself that if it's in the diary then it has to be done. In this way you can break up, what may seem like, momentous goals into small achievable tasks.

A food diary like this allows you the opportunity of reviewing your behaviours and gives you the means for formulating new plans to help build new behaviours. These changes then act as a guide for setting weight-loss, eating and exercise goals. A food diary is a great way of tracking your progress. You now have the ability of reviewing your approach to your weight loss goals by giving you the chance to look over your behaviours and actions from the previous days, weeks and months. This is extremely motivating and reassuring. As you see how well you have done you are spurred on to even greater action. In a similar manner you can become more conscious of those times when you broke your new routine, ate that extra piece of cake, failed to exercise et. However, armed with this knowledge you can formulate a plan to deal with the problems that you have identified.

A food diary gives you the opportunity to make a conscious choice about your eating habits instead of going on automatic around food. Writing down what you can eat and can't eat and reviewing your goals for the day sets out a clear plan and allows you to think twice before you act. A daily and weekly diary, with goals and strategies, is an approach used in business and by almost all high-achievers. They use it because it works.

To begin with you will just right down everything you eat and drink during the day. You will add your leisure activities like walking, jogging or just watching television. While you are in the middle of the task think about the reason or motivation behind doing it. Then once you have finished write the reason down in your diary. Do this with every activity even when you eat. This will allow you to analyse your motivations.

After a week of keeping daily entries in your diary you should review it. You will find definite patterns emerging. Look closely at those patterns and use them to structure an eating and exercise plan for the upcoming week. Write an entry each day of what you will eat and what activity you will perform to help shed those excess pounds. For example, if you find that you are eating at certain times during the day because you are bored then this is an excellent time to pen into your diary an exercise activity or anything else that will relieve the boredom! Diligence and persistence is required to keep and follow your food diary but once you do the rewards are tremendous. Many people do not realize just how much they snack or eat due to reasons that have nothing to do with hunger. Using your food diary will allow you to become aware of these times and help you to formulate a plan to deal with the situation. It will also help you to formulate realistic goals because you have to put the activities and food you will eat down on paper. In the begining you may find that your aspirations outway your capabilities. Many times when we first start using a food diary we cram it with activities that are unrealistic. On the other hand some people don't fill it up enough and find that they have too much time on their hands and we all know this leads to over-eating! However, with practise and time you will reach a comprimise with yourself.

Remember to jot down exactly how you feel and take note of the emotions. Our emotions truly do rule our behaviour. The more honest you are with yourself the more you will get out of this process. If you find that you are eating from stress or emotional issues then put it into your diary, as one of your activities, that you need to find techniques and approaches to deal with these emotions. Hypnosis, subliminals and other self improvement techniques have high success rates when it comes to re-programming our behaviours and eliminating emotional issues.

Keeping a diary can take some getting used to in the beginning, and to many it may sound like a waste of time, but it is a proven method for helping reach and maintain a healthy weight and has been shown to help people reach goals of all kinds.