Sarah Egan says she knew she needed to build muscle and gain endurance when she joined Creighton University's rowing team four years ago. She didn't realize the quickest way to her fitness goals would be the use of a pen and paper.

Body Mass Index | Plan Meals | Your Calorie Needs

Thousands of Web sites offer to help you lose weight by tracking your eating. But you can accomplish the same thing with a notebook and a Bic. Experts say it can be one of the most effective, easiest diet tools -- just writing down every calorie that passes your lips and everything you burn off through exercise.

"A lot of times, people don't want to know," said exercise science instructor Jennifer Yee of Creighton University.

Yee teaches a course that requires students to use journaling. As a freshman rower and future personal trainer, Egan took the class.

Egan said that it was immediately clear what was missing in her diet.

"I knew I didn't take in enough calories, and I wasn't eating that healthy. I had been on the Atkins diet. Pretty much all I'd been eating was salads and egg whites. I hadn't been gaining muscle," Egan said. "Being a rower, you burn so many calories and I wasn't getting enough calories to be efficient at practice."

Three weeks of journaling for Yee's class got Egan over her carb-free lifestyle and showed her why she needed carbohydrates to make it through practice and perform well at competitions.

"I lost 3 percent body fat and gained 15 pounds of muscle that year," Egan said.

Wake-Up Call

Looking at what you eat and how much you exercise can be a big wake-up call when trying to assess why you're not meeting your fitness goals, or when you're ready to start a weight-loss program, Egan said.

Yee used the journaling technique recently herself, she said, because after a surgery she knew she couldn't be as active. She wanted to dial back her food intake to make up for it and prevent weight gain.

"If you have to write it down, you're probably not going to eat it," Yee said.

"Seeing exactly what you put in your mouth makes you more accountable," Good Housekeeping reported. "No longer can you mindlessly finish off a box of cookies or pile on a third helping without notice."

Give Yourself Credit

The upside of a diet journal is that a user also gets to take credit for exercise. Egan said a freshman year filled with ice-cream socials helped her appreciate her diet journal in a hurry.

"I'd think, 'You've had enough to eat,'" Egan said, remembering her thoughts as she stood over the rows of vanilla ice cream with hot fudge topping.

If she couldn't resist, she knew from her journal that she could make it up the next day by working harder at practice to burn more calories.

"If you had bad day, you can make up for it the next day, because you look at it week by week," she said.

What Do You Want?

Before starting a journal, you need to know what you hope to accomplish. Do you want to lose weight? Gain muscle? Boost energy? Set those goals and write them down in the journal.

Many online and computer-based programs allow you to set those goals and adjust them as your fitness level changes. For instance, if you enter a 10-pound weight loss over the next three months, many automated journals do the math for you. A 32-year-old woman with a moderate activity level, for example, would need to cut 380 calories a day (or burn an additional 380 calories a day) to meet the goal.

"I saw it as a challenge -- I needed to know (what I was consuming) so I had somewhere to start from," said Kelley Hammond of Colorado Springs, Colo., who started a three-week journal a year ago and still turns to the technique when she wants to realign her fitness goals or get control of her eating habits. "Once you have that starting point, it's easier to know where you want to go from there. I think that's something that a lot of America lacks is having a plan."

Hammond said it's important to reset your goals once you meet one in order to keep from backsliding.

Do The Math

Whether you're using a pen and paper or letting an online program do the work, enter your portions and exercise minutes accurately. Sites such as NutritionData.com have thousands of popular foods, including packaged items and meals from chain restaurants, listed on their sites. Many automated diet journals do the same, so a dieter is just one click away from having a meal's worth of data loaded for analysis. Nutrition labels on food are an excellent resource, too.

Be Honest

Math alone won't make you lose you weight. You need to write down every nosh, down to the last Cheez-It.

"It's all about honestly -- holding yourself to a standard. Are you going to be serious about it?" Yee said.

Liquids can contain calories, too, so report every drink to your diet journal. You can quickly see that a mai tai packs 310 calories, while a 5 oz. glass of wine has 100 calories. Writing it down helps you make better choices, and those choices can become part of a long-term commitment to better habits. Resources

Online Journals

MyPyramidTracker.gov

Shape.com.

MyFoodDiary.com

Downloadable

WeightByDate.com

JournalToSuccess.com

HealthCrazed.com