OK, I will admit it… I love junk food. I love pizza, beer, wine, and chocolate. You might not think that would be the case since I make natural and healthy skin care but I will admit it, I love junk food.

Since my goal this year is to build healthy habits, I figure the best place to start is with sitting down and seeing what those unhealthy habits are (and even finding out what good habits I have!).

I will keep a food journal. In that journal I will write down everything I eat and the portions. I also will write down any exercise that I did.

I will not count calories till the end of the week. At the end of the week, I will sit down and figure out the calories per day and what my daily caloric intake for the week was. I will also begin to see patterns in my eating habits and places where I can substitute a better habit for healthy alternative.

Once I sit down and calculate my caloric intake for the week. I will also need to find out how many calories a week I should be taking in to maintain my current weight or to lose weight. You can go to the Mayo Clinic’s Caloric Calculator to find this out. I will use a site like Calorie King to figure out the calories in the food I am eating. Also, we currently use a meal planner site like relish! to plan our dinners. They include in their recipes calories for each serving making it easy to know what you are eating (and even easier to plan).

Remember I am not making any judgements against myself this week. I just want to get an idea of what my typical habits are.

One habit I want to add this week is to make sure I am drinking my water. I am usually great about this but I fell off the wagon during the busy winter season.

Next week, I will give some H2O alternatives that help to flush the system and make water more fun (and make adult beverages more fun and healthy too!).

Side note: People say that those that keep a food diary not only lose more weight, they keep it off!