Keeping records is an important part of any job - selling clothes, dealing with patients, running an airline. Obviously.

It is just as important and effective when we are trying to manage our weight. It helps you to check whether you are making the progress you want, allows you to spot when you need to take some further or different action. This will include the behaviour you are wanting to change and the impact. (For me at the moment, it is eating just one slice of toast at breakfast and trying to achieve 10,000 steps with the pedomenter. So I write this down in my notebook. Did I or didn't I?) And then write down the waist measurement and scales once a week at the same time of day.

Research has shown that self‐monitoring like this is not just a document of the effectiveness of the things you are doing, but is part of the treatment. The very act of keeping a record leads to behaviour change.

As with any chronic disease, when intervention stops, the disease comes back. So when we stop keeping a record, experience shows that more often than not, the weight comes back.

Remember, keeping a food journal or activity log and wearing a pedometer is not just to measure your progress - it is actually part of the  treatment!