Keeping a food journal is a sure-shot way to holding your weight in check, researchers and dieticians tell us. Write down what you eat through the day, including those in-between mid-afternoon and midnight snacks that no one saw you helping yourself to, and then tote it up to get a complete picture of what you stuff yourself with.

If you survive having consumed all that you have — and get over the shock of becoming aware of it because it is right there in black and white — then you are on the road to a leaner life!

You can no longer fool yourself or try to fool others with comments like, ‘I barely eat but I can’t seem to lose weight!’ because now you have added that wedge of chocolate cake and those cheese sandwiches slathered with butter that you munched you way through while watching your favourite after-dinner television serial!

Journals can be great companions and can heal body and soul. The body, because they can put an end to overeating; the soul, because they can be the start of a great journey for the imagination or bring comfort to battered hearts as instruments for total recall.

Long ago, like many who had just entered their teens and were experiencing mixed emotions and mixed up feelings, I started a journal. Although it was meant for my eyes only, I could not get myself to be totally honest in it and didn’t put in all those things that would have made interesting reading at a later date, like feeling hurt when someone ignored me or being on top of the world when someone else noticed.

Dull reading

Instead I confined myself to cryptic entries like, ‘Went for walk, met S, saw D, bought bread, came home, did homework’. Obviously S and D must have been important in my life — surely, whenever I saw the entry again, I would remember! But I didn’t. Within a short time, the see-saw of emotions was lost and the journal was dull reading.

So, with the approval of my gang of friends who relied on me to check what we had done on which day, I began another phase of journal writing. The group, the timeline, the places were all true, but I made up the rest. Embellished what we did so that we had weird and wonderful stories of our exploits! We could have been honest and called it fiction, but what was the fun of that? It was so much better to brighten our generally staid lives by believing that we had actually experienced those exciting events!

Eventually, that journal, too, was relegated to the dustbin. Fun fiction took a back seat and real life took over — and I started recording what my newborn was fed. From there it went on to what he did and what he said and for all those wonderful years of learning to walk and learning to talk, everything was noted down.

Those journals were saved and read and re-read during the harsh times of a 15-year-old’s demands, an 18-year-old’s angst, a 20-year-old’s impatience — all of which could be handled without heartache because I could go back to moment-by-moment jottings of a toddler’s loving prattle.

Now, I feel there are other journals we should start as our memories play tricks on us. Many a marital row could perhaps be avoided if we noted down how our day-to-day decisions are made — who got his or her way with the television remote or who did the dishes after which party.

Weeks later, we could just pull out that journal, set the record straight, say, ‘It’s your/my turn now!’ and go about our daily life and our division of labour without bellyaching!

Cheryl Rao is a journalist based in India.