If you're a fitness-magazine junkie as I am, you may have followed the saga of Courtney Rubin's "Weight Loss Diary" throughout the 2001 issues of SHAPE magazine. With a team of weight-loss professionals supporting her, Courtney made incredible accomplishments, including finishing a marathon (that she ran all the way). The pure numbers of her weight loss, however, paled in comparison to the expectations many held. Even with access to some of the world's best experts, her progress on the scale stalled.

For me, Courtney's experience reiterates that absolutely no program, potion or pill can counterbalance behaviors that are not conducive to weight loss. It is truly the person who determines his or her own outcome, not the diet program, personal trainer, physician or nutritionist involved.

The real work of weight loss begins on the inside, with all the attitudes, beliefs and self-talk that determine any given behavior. As such, one of the few truly successful techniques in weight loss is self-monitoring, in which a person tracks and analyzes his or her behaviors in a journal. Logically, then, nearly every non-clinical and clinical diet program uses food journals, including Weight Watchers and Jenny Craig.

If attaining your fitness goal requires a change in eating behavior, keeping a food diary is probably the most important step you can take toward success. If you've been turned off before by the thought of the "J" word, let's clear up a few misconceptions about keeping a food journal. It shouldn't be a punishment or a chore; neither should it be a testament to your willpower nor a tool of self-loathing. Keeping a food diary is a research-backed method of monitoring your food intake if eating is a behavior you want to change. It's personalized, adaptable and as detailed as you want to make it.

To make your life easier, we've divided the process of keeping a food diary into six stages, which gradually increase in expression and explanation. Here's how this tool can be your opportunity to succeed at weight loss and nutritional well-being from the inside, out.

STAGE GET EQUIPPED

You might not think the type of journal you choose would impact your results, but personalizing your food diary is actually a great way to improve your odds of success, says Gail Frank, DrPH, MPH, PD, a professor of nutrition at California State University, Long Beach, and spokesperson for the American Dietetic Association. "There's a way to personalize it, anywhere from creating your own pages to notebook paper to a small book that you can carry," she explains. "I think that's where it begins to become personal and a part of you."

We could literally devote five pages to the many types of food diaries available. Lucky for you, I have a limit on word count. The short list is paper, PDA (personal digital assistant) or personal computer Read on for the pros and cons of each.

PAPER JOURNALS

Advantages:

* Easy to use and small enough to fit in your purse. You could go with a little spiral notebook, an artsy cloth-covered journal book or even a pocket calendar.

* You can make it as detailed or as abbreviated as you wish. You can easily flip through pages to identify patterns and troubleshoot.

Disadvantages:

* You'll need to consult a nutrition book for the calories and grams of carbs/protein/fat/fiber for the foods you've logged in.

* Daily totals aren't calculated automatically.

Try it: Memory Minder's Diet Minder (www.memoryminder.com), Better Body (www.better-body.com), Figure Facts (www.figurefacts.com; also offers online and PDA diaries).

FDA PROGRAMS FOR PALM OS

Advantages:

* Small enough to take with you.

* Calculates your daily totals automatically.

* Programs include calories and macronutrient information, so you don't have to look it up later.

* Many programs also include an exercise log.

Disadvantages:

* Takes forever to program new foods.

* Downloading the software can be a lengthy process, frustrating if you're not a tech-head.

* Not all foods are available in the software programs. (I added Calorie King's software -- which has a 10,000-food database I can use in conjunction with my BalanceLog -- to my handheld.)

Try it: HealtheTech's BalanceLog (www.healthetech.com), Vivonic (www.vivonic.com), Figure Facts (www.figurefacts.com).

INTERNET PROGRAMS

Advantages:

* Large database of foods to choose from.

* Many free programs are available that offer comprehensive tracking of diet and exercise.

* Some programs can also create customized diet plans for you (like fitnessonlinecom's Optimize program).

Disadvantages:

* You can't take it with you.

* If you don't have a computer at home and at work, you won't be able to make a complete record in the same day.

* If you log in everything at the end of the day, you're almost sure to omit something that you ate or drank since waking up.

* When your online connection is moving at a snail's pace, you must fight the sudden urge to chuck your computer out the window.

Try it: www.fitnessonline.com (click on Optimize), www. fitday.com. www.figurefacts.com.

STAGE 2 IT'S ALL IN THE DETAILS

The more detailed you can be with your food diary, the better results you'll enjoy, notes John Jakicic, PhD, associate professor at Brown University's Weight Control and Diabetes Research Center in Providence, Rhode island. When Jakicic's research team put two different groups of women on either a very detailed or more simplified food diary protocol, those with the more detailed version did about twice as well in terms of weight loss than those keeping a more abbreviated diary. "It just reaffirms that the more detailed you can make your self-monitoring record, the more success you're probably going to have in these programs and the better changes you're going to make in your behavior," he says.

But don't expect to jump into a very detailed food record cold turkey. "Just think about it -- cold turkey's pretty dry," laughs Frank. She suggests committing to a six-month self-monitoring plan in which you become more detailed in stages.

The act of writing down or logging is just your first step. Frank explains that you'll want to log the 5 Ws and the H -- the who, what, when, where, why and how of your eating behavior. To Frank, the act of writing down is very important, as it starts to bring your behavior to the forefront of your mind. As your awareness of your behaviors and the motivations behind them grows, it's then time to analyze on a deeper level.

For example, after your first week of monitoring, she suggests reviewing the diary and making a list of your "core" foods. Find about 25 foods you've consumed that week, which you must have in your diet and are not willing to substitute. If your goal is weight loss, you might then consider lower-fat or lower-calorie substitutes for the foods that aren't on your top-25 list. You might also analyze critical times that tend to result in binges or successful strategies you've used to stick with your program.

After you've adjusted to the habit of logging your meals and snacks, you might want to begin logging your exercise sessions. "The two need to go together," states Frank Most of us consume more than we realize and exercise less than we think, and a record can help you critically analyze these behaviors. Again, depending on the type of diary you're using, this can be as abbreviated or as detailed as you choose.

On the nutrition side, your next stage might be moving from approximation of food to a very detailed measurement, including how a food was prepared. Rather than logging "chicken burrito," you would break it down and record the actual size or weight of the burrito, the cheese, guacamole or rice it included, and of course the actual number of chips you ate rather than "a few." The Internet can be a great resource here, as more and more restaurants either publish their nutritional information online or will send it to you on request.

STAGE 3

HONESTY IS THE BEST POLICY

A friend of mine trying to lose a significant amount of weight recently admitted to me that she didn't log certain binges or "bad days" in her food journal. Though she was the only one who would see the diary, for her own reasons, she wasn't willing to record them. For a variety of reasons, food records are notoriously under-reported. This can he due to innocent omissions, a purposeful refusal to face the music or more serious underlying emotional issues.

On the lighter side, yesterday I dutifully logged in my breakfast, lunch and snack but forgot about the four Easter chocolates I grabbed in the office lobby. (I later made myself log them in my PDA and face the 200 extra calories I consumed in a matter of seconds.) Here's how easy it is to mindlessly inhale just 100 extra calories.

10 jelly beans
2 Oreos
5 pretzels
1/8 cup plain M&M's
10 large green olives
4 Tootsie Rolls
4 Hershey's kisses
5 restaurant half-and-half containers