One way to ensure your diet isn’t full of fat, sugar and other bad stuff is to keep a food diary of everything you eat during the day.

At least that’s what I’ve read in almost every book and article on losing weight.

So I figured how hard could it be? I wanna lose weight so it was worth a try. (That said, I should have remembered the numerous diaries purchased by my mom for me over the years that only have six-to-eight pages filled. It would have been a good predictor of my success with this endeavor.)

Still, even after keeping a week’s worth of food entries, I learned three invaluable lessons.

First, a food diary is like a nasty written form of guilt, glaring back at you and shoving your innumerable indiscretions in your face. Even worse, it’s in your own handwriting.

Seeing “plateful of kim chee fried rice and Bubbies chocolate milk shake at Big City Diner” practically conjures Jillian Michaels’ voice screeching, “You ate WHAT?! What are you doing?!”

Even on days where I was a good little eater, with oatmeal for breakfast, fruit for snacks, and a sensible salad for dinner, I still felt immense guilt because I would ruin whatever progress I made by the next day’s entry: “three malasadas from Leonard’s Bakery.” And yup, I ate a custard-filled one, a dobash-filled one, and then a cinnamon dusted malasada.

Eating malasadas the day after following a healthy diet is like going on one date with the nice guy and building up your self-esteem only to wind the night down with the bad boy at some seedy bar.

Second, I learned a food diary requires complete knowledge of what you’re eating. Yes, eating strawberries is a great idea! It’s not such a good idea to eat the entire bucket of strawberries with a tablespoon of brown sugar and whipped cream.

Eating one banana is making a healthy choice! Not so much if the banana is actually a bunch with honey drizzled over accompanying granola.

Quantifying foods you consume also helps you figure out calories. What exactly does a “plateful of kim chee fried rice” mean? Is that a cup? Is that two cups? Is that two fists madly shoving spicy goodness into a gaping maw?

Because I didn’t exactly know how much I was eating, I found myself guessing about several entries. And, as I’ve cheated on my diet, I’ve cheated on the approximate calories.

“Uhhhh, lessee… If one-third cup of oatmeal is 150 calories, that oatmeal cookie must be about that much, too, huh? Maybe with just 15 calories more for the chocolate chips.”

Finally, I learned that writing each entry every day is tantamount to success so it’s best to make the entries as close to your meal as possible. Unfortunately, that also means confronting your hungry self’s random choices immediately after you’ve consumed those calories.

On days I didn’t enter the information immediately after I ate, my food diary featured entries such as “some kind of fish” and “ice cream.” I’m sure the type of fish matters as to accuracy. Butterfish, after all, is fattier than ahi. Weeks later, upon review of the diary, one might even think I went by the Waikiki Aquarium and had a quick bite.

As for the ice cream, I know it wasn’t the low-fat Skinny Cow variety. It was more likely the Haagen Daz regret-it-always pure cream bar. But, as any good defense lawyer would argue, if there really isn’t any evidence toward the latter, I can’t be held accountable for any alleged crimes against dietary restrictions!

Ah, but there were days where I was diligent about entering food I consumed, and on those days, I walked around lambasting myself for my actions. Losing weight is hard enough, exercising almost every day to lose 1.5 pounds a week, just to ruin it all for a brownie sundae that would revisit itself on my scale.

Keeping a food diary is also a mood-killer for friends and family joining you for a night out. Derek and I were out for dinner one night at a fairly nice restaurant. We sat across each other after enjoying our entries and smiled, feeling the wonderfully warm afterglow of a good meal.

“That was a great dinner, wasn’t it?” he asked.

“It really was! I loved the opah,” I said, reaching down to my purse for my little diary.

“What are you doing, Gen?”

“Oh, nothing… Now, would you say that was two ounces of opah? And that corn… Would you say that was a one-third cup?

Do you think they used butter?”

“I…I…I don’t know?” Derek replied, looking everywhere but at his now-frazzled wife.

“Well, if it was only a third cup, I don’t think that’s really that bad, right? Right? Oh man! I think they used butter! Argh! Do I look fatter already?!”

You get the picture. The food diary works better than a best buddy working the third wheel position with his high school best friend and his favorite girl, except the buddy eventually goes home. The diary, on the other hand, stays with you forever.

Maybe I’m putting the cart before the proverbial horse when I say I will probably like having a food diary when I’m more disciplined with my diet. For now, however, that diary is joining other brave diaries that have gone before it: under the bed, out of sight, and out of my ever-dieting mind.