My Food Diary.

A girl friend and I were just chatting online about how in five months, she has to get into a wedding dress... And in three months, I have to get into a bathing suit again.

She made a declaration that she was "done" with the crap food for good. And the we chatted about what each of us had for breakfast this morning...

Friend: English Muffin and Neufchatel (Cream cheese Substitute)

The Missus: Key Lime Larabar and Grande Skinny Hazelnut Latte

Our IM conversation read as though we were two teen aged girls obsessed with how little we eat. Instead of the 30-something women we are, chatting about how we are trying to eat healthy.

Since the start of the new year, I have been more diligent about watching what I eat at every meal, and how much coffee I drink. And, in order to do this, my trainer at Equinox introduced me to an online tool that is very helpful. It's called "My Food Diary."

The website (which I pay a fee to every month) allows you to track your food intake, exercise efforts and weight. It helps you track how quickly you can lose weight too, with forecasting (based on how you ate one day) across a few weeks.

Here's an example of what I ate on January 1, 2008:

And here's the assessment at the end of the day:

There are thousands of different foods in the Food Diary's system. But you can also enter things manually. And, if you tend to eat the same things every day, you can just store certain foods in your "online fridge."

So far, I have found this to be an extremely useful tool. If toning up and losing weight are some of your goals for this year, you should look into using it.