A written log of your child's (and family's) progress towards their fitness goals can also help motivate, troubleshoot problem areas, and keep healthy living top of mind. To be effective, a food and fitness journal should be reasonably accurate, consistent, and detailed. Encourage complete honesty; let your child know that this is a tool, not a test, and no one will be punished for mistakes.

Food and Fitness Journals

Unless they're too young to write, kids should be responsible for keeping their own food diaries. A daily date book or planner will give your child a page for each day, which may serve as a good reminder for her. Any type of a notebook or journal will do, though. Let her pick it out if she'd like.

Journals are best kept in a chronological format and should include the following information:

• Meals — Everything your child eats at each meal of the day, along with where and when she eats the meal. Encourage your child to note when she has additional servings, and also to indicate if she was doing anything else (such as watching television) while eating.

• Snacks (both big and small) — All of your child's between-meal snack choices, and what time(s) of the day she snacks.

• Drinks — All beverages your child drinks, except for water.

• Movement — Exercise activities, both formal (like softball practice or gym class) and informal (walking to and from school, a bike ride to a friend's house).

• Down time — How much time your child spends watching television, playing video games, and participating in other sedentary activities.

• Diary — A space for personal reflections on what kind of a day your child had. These notes can help you determine when eating behaviors are tied to emotional or social cues.

Kids want and need their privacy, so if your child has qualms about sharing his journal with you, talk about it. You may be able to solve the problem by having him maintain the diary section of his journal in a separate place and giving him the option of sharing it with you only if he feels comfortable doing so. Ask only that he faithfully spend a few minutes doing it at the end of each day. Even if you never get the opportunity to see the diary portion, it will allow your child to start to consciously link his feelings and thoughts with his fitness behaviors.

Because you're all in this together, it's a really good idea to keep an ongoing family journal as well. As you work on instilling healthier behaviors, you should keep a journal that chronicles family meals and activities and your own observations on daily obstacles and victories. Try to include this information:

• Meals — List everything you put on the table for family meals, including condiments and drinks. If serving something new, note how it was received and how you might be able to improve upon the meal next time around. You can also include snacks if you'd like.

• Family activities — Make sure you include everything from yard work and chores to family walks and bike rides.

• Grocery lists — Keeping your grocery list in your fitness journal will keep healthy choices top of mind. It also allows you to keep running lists as you evaluate what new healthy foods were popular, and not so popular, with your family.

• Achievements — Did your child actually request fruit for a snack when she bounced in the door after school? Were the kids outside playing all day without so much as a mention of the television? Record the victories (big and small) that your family accomplishes.

• Daily wrapup — Similar to your child's diary section of her personal journal, the wrapup will allow you to jot a few notes about the day's events and the family's emotional temperature. If your child is keeping her diary private, then having your own record of things is even more helpful.

Keeping a food and fitness journal may seem arduous at first, but if you set aside ten to fifteen minutes at the end of each day to complete the task, it will soon be routine. Once you and your child are in the groove and keeping regular records, you should designate one hour a week for going over the results and looking for weaknesses and strengths. Appendix A has sample journal formats you can use.

Identifying Patterns and Problem Areas

Make the effort of analyzing your fitness journals a collaborative one. Encourage complete honesty, and really listen to your child — even if you don't always like what she has to say. If she tells you she hated the tofu surprise you served for dinner, for instance, you should not defend its nutritional value. Instead, talk about what other alternatives she might like you to try.

Quite a bit can be learned from where and when your child eats his meals. You may notice he eats twice as many after-school snacks on rainy days when he sits in front of the television than on days when he enjoys his snack outdoors. Skipping breakfast probably makes him ravenous for the wrong kinds of food at lunch. The very act of writing down his mealtime habits will make him more aware of the issues that influence his fitness. Talk about trends that you and your child notice as you do your weekly review.

Finally, always try to find something positive to say about the week, even when it's been a rough one for your child. Perhaps she passed up a fat-filled favorite at the school cafeteria, or maybe she walked home from school instead of taking the bus. Just the fact that she continued to write in her journal each day is reason enough to let her know you're proud of her commitment to her health.