Battle your bulge with pen and paper

Quick -- grab a pen and paper if you want to lose weight and keep it off. It worked for dieters in one of the largest and longest weight-loss maintenance trials ever conducted. The more food journals dieters kept, the more weight they lost.

Dieters followed the DASH diet -- it's low in saturated fat, cholesterol, and total fat; emphasizes fruits, vegetables, and low-fat dairy foods; includes whole-grain products, fish, poultry, and nuts; encourages fewer servings of red meat, sweets, and sugar-containing beverages; and is rich in magnesium, potassium, calcium, protein, and fiber. These folks also attended weekly group sessions and exercised for at least 30 minutes per day. And some jotted down everything they ate -- these are the lucky ones who after six months lost twice as much weight as those who did not journal what and how much they'd eaten.

Simple stuff. Eat. Write it down. Eat. Write it down. It's one way for your to take a critical look at your eating habits. Here's exactly how you do it.