As originally posted on the Habits.MarkJacobsen.net blog (2 weeks ago – apparently I forgot to hit publish over here)…

Ok, here’s the first 66 day challenge/habit… Log everything you eat and the time of day. Doesn’t matter if you take photos of everything, write it down electronically, on paper, or do some combination, but by the end of the day have 1 consolidated list of everything you ate – including those little snack size Snickers I know you’re eyeing – seeing as it is near Halloween and all 🙂

Now, do that for 66 days. Every day. Every thing you eat (and drink).

See, super easy! I’m not even asking you to change anything about what you eat or drink. Just write it all down. Now, this may be simple for some, but if you’re like me I’ve tried to do this time and again. Usually by about the 4th day I miss something, then just say “ah, what’s the use” and quit.

Using HabitShare this is actually pretty easy – as I’ve been piloting it for a couple days. On any day, you can tap the circle for the day, then just click the triple ellipse “…”, I select the “Empty” icon at the start of the day, add your entry to the text area, and save. At the end of the day, just set the status to “Success” (the green check) if you’ve logged everything. You can even setup multiple reminders throughout the day so that you have a little tickler. For me I have 3 reminders for my “Log Food” habit scheduled at 7:15am, 12:30pm, and 7:15pm.

Now, obviously this is setting us up for future challenges, but for now the goal is to get in the habit of tracking and logging something daily. As I mentioned, don’t worry about analyzing or adjusting now unless you truly get the itch. Just build the logging/tracking habit.