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When you get to the 21-day plan (Chapter 13), you’ll see that the first day’s task is to start keeping a food diary.

So why are we asking you to keep a food diary? Most of us eat food without thinking about how it makes us feel – it’s just like fuel to fill our faces and stomachs. But it is important to know what you’re eating and how it makes you feel. For starters, if you’re not clued up about food, you can end up eating more than you should, the wrong types of food or going a day eating hardly anything. Actions like these can lead to weight gain and feelings of illness and/or unhappiness. Writing it down in a diary helps you to take a good, hard look at your eating habits. Also, if you don’t write it down, it’s easy to forget that mini chocolate bar you ate, or the half portion of chips you finished off your kids’ plates!

There is an example of Nicki’s food diary here. Nicki found that filling in the diary helped her understand the times of the day when her cravings were at their worst (such as on waking and the ‘post-lunch’ dip), and aware of foods that made her happy or short-tempered, satisfied or bloated. Working from left to right, these are the columns to be filled in:

• Time of day – put in WHEN you ate.

• Food/Drink – fill in WHAT you ate. Put exactly what you ate (e.g. one large baked potato with tuna and sweetcorn, NOT just ‘jacket potato’).

• Physical symptoms – write in how you felt PHYSICALLY (e.g. rushed, sick, hungry, full).

• How you’re feeling – put in how you felt EMOTIONALLY (happy, grumpy, tearful, normal). For ideas of how you might feel (rather than just filling in ‘fine’) see our list below.

• Other factors. Here you might want to put in such things as ‘Have PMS’ or ‘Had argument with colleague’ or even ‘First day of holiday’ – anything that may be relevant to the choices you’re making and how you’re feeling. Also record your exercise here. Don’t forget it’s not just the gym that counts. ‘Walking the dog’ goes in here, too!