I'm just about to head downtown in order to buy the last final Christmas gifts. Yeah, I know, talk about last minute!

Anyway, since I am heading out to lunch with my baby sister right afterwards, I wanted to give you the reason why it's so important to track what you eat.

The last couple of weeks, I have received a lot of questions from people asking what the very first step to stay on top of their nutrition is, and without a doubt the most important thing is to track it with a journal.

So how do you do it?

Pretty simply actually. Start by writing down exactly what you're eating, for example:

3 whole eggs
1 cup chopped broccoli
1/2 red onion
2 slices of whole wheat bread

After you have done that, I want you to rank it between 1-5, where 1 represents "a really bad choice", and 5 is "the best choice possible".

At the end of the day, you should count those points and see what they sum up to. If you're eating 5 meals, that means you could have 25 points at the end of the day.

If you end up with 10 points, then that's a very bad day. 20-25 is considered a good day.

At the end of the day, I want you to calculate your points, and then just write some notes on the results. For example:

"25 points. I did great today. No cravings, felt productive and sharp, were able to work out for 25 min".

If you had a low result, then write down your feelings and what you believe was the reason for getting such low results.

The idea here is to be able to track your progress and stay on top of your intake. If you get low results, don't see it as a failure, see it as something that needs to be improved, something you should learn from!

By writing down your thoughts and feelings, you will be able to go back to that in order to get that positive feeling back, and track positive patterns!

So grab a notebook and get to work!

Jonas