One of the keys to success, especially early in the process of developing your own personal eating plan, is to keep a food diary. You don't need any special forms or gimmicks. A one-page per day Day Planner or a simple notebook will work just as well. Click here for an example form to use. Write the date on the page and then - as you eat them - write down everything you eat during each day. Putting the time the food was eaten and what your mood was at the time you ate (hurried, stressed, relaxed, distracted, bored, hungry, etc.) are all useful. Two rules can be applied:

1. You need to be totally, completely, absolutely honest. Do not leave things out. If you fell apart Tuesday night and ate a half-gallon tub of ice cream, write it down! If you were depressed and sad and ate a whole pizza, write it down! There is nothing that you should leave out. This is not a grade school test for which you will get a grade. You are not trying to impress anyone. This is for no one but you and your doctor to view. You are not going to put it up on a billboard for everyone to see and comment on. You are not going to show it to your friends or relatives. Be honest and be absolutely, brutally frank about what you are eating.
2. Be specific. Don't simply write down that you ate rice or potatoes. Write down that you ate 2 cups of rice or 4 tablespoons of potatoes with butter. Don't say that you had meatloaf but that you had four 3/4" slices of meatloaf. Don't write down you have beans and hot dogs. Write down that you had two cups of beans with 4 hot dogs. If you ate at 12:00 midnight, write down exactly what time you ate and what you ate.

The emotional state you were in when you ate is essential. Emotional eating is very common.

• your mother goes in the hospital
• your dog dies
• your child is sick
• you had a fight with your spouse
• you got two late payment notices in the mail

Different stresses - even the lack of stress (boredom) - triggers specific eating in most people. Pinpointing emotional triggers can help you and your doctor identify specific responses to specific stresses. When you see that certain things (stressors) trigger certain behaviors (overeating or "bingeing"), you can develop a plan to respond to these in a different, more healthy way. If you know that when your bills come due, you are going to feel stressed, you can plan a time to deal with that when you are not around food. For example, take the bills and the checkbook to the library after work and do the bills there. Take them anywhere you are not in a "food rich" environment.

You may have heard the military term a "target rich environment." It simply means there are lots of things to shoot at. Your house, quite probably, is also a "target rich environment." But, for the patient who deals with overeating or unhealthy eating, the "target" is soothing, comfort foods. After you have completed a 2 or 4 week food diary, it is easy to identify your "target" foods. My target food is ice cream, specifically, Breyer's™ Vanilla Bean ice cream. If I have that stuff in my living space, I am going to eat it.

There are, therefore, two choices. Either I eliminate the Breyer's™ Vanilla Bean ice cream completely from my environment or I establish controls over this food. In my particular case, as I fight my own battles with weight, I have decided not to completely eliminate the ice cream from my home. But, since I do have it in my living space, I do make sure that I have control of when, where and how much I eat of it. I have, on the other hamd. completely eliminated microwavable pizza (and pizza bites), chocolate and some other foods that I have problems with and can definitely do without. But, I chose to have ice cream. I have just learned to establish controls on its availability. More on that later.