1. Getting started .. you need a bathroom scale. Weigh yourself at the same time each day, wearing the same clothes or nothing, most likely first thing in the morning or last thing before you go to bed.
Write down the result, every day, in a diary or on a wall calender.
Expect that the numbers will vary, in a range of about one or two lbs (or 1Kg). You should start to get a feel for how you ate and how much exercise you had the day before affects the weight numbers. Women should expect wider fluctuations around the time of menstruation.
2. Optional, but recommended .. find a friendly physician, tell them that you are interested in understanding how your nutrition interacts with your health, and ask them to prescribe the set of blood tests listed here.
Talk to your friends and family about your health and weight goals. Explain that you plan to eat with greater awareness of the nutrients and calories in your food, and that you will be counting calories and monitoring your nutrition, at least for a period of time. Don't be surprised if they express concern - social pressures to 'fit in', to conform, to 'share our food' are one of the more difficult pressures working against your ability to take control of what you actually eat. Look here [insert link] for other people's experiences and suggestions.
Start to read some of forum discussion topics here. Feel free to ask questions.
3. Buy a gram accurate food scale, also called a postal scale, if you don't already own one. You will also need a measuring jug for liquids.
4. This assumes that you have access to a computer onto which you can download client software. There isn't, yet, a browser version of the Cron-O-Meter (COM) tool. Go to COM and download the version which corresponds to the kind of computer you have. Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux are supported. [link to forum discussion on how to use COM]
5. Start to record your weight in the COM every day.
6. For one day, on some day when you are not going out to eat, weigh all the food you eat, measure all the liquids you drink, and enter all the results in COM. This will seem like a huge chore - it gets easier with time.
Estimating numbers for restaurant meals takes practice. Hints here.
7. Continuing entering the food and drink you have in COM every day - the idea is to build an honest record of what you eat. This is the basic information which you need in order to tell how to improve the quality of your nutrition.
Observe your nutrition reports: are you consistently low in particular vitamins and minerals? No matter how small or light you are, your nutritional needs remain the same. Work towards hitting 100% or more on the Recomended Daily Amounts of each essential nutrient. You’ll notice that in addition to improving your health, getting your RDAs will cut back on food cravings and hunger. When you feed your body what it truly craves, you have fewer cravings for unhealthful foods
8. Set your targets for calories consumed. Based on your weight, height and level of activity, amounts of vitamins, minerals, protein, carbohydrates, and so on (the nutrition targets) are derived. Try modifying your diet to get closer to 100% of the target amounts. If you feel brave enough, start to post your results from COM, in the 'COMs compared' topic.
Tell the rest of us about how easy or difficult it is for you to achieve your targets.
If you are already at your target weight, then keep on refining step 8.
Try exercising a little more, and understanding what that does to your weight and your calorie requirements. If you are not at your target weight, and you want to be lighter, reduce your target daily calorie amount by 50 calories, while keeping your nutrition targets at the same level as before. Once you start to see regular weight loss, you will have found the level of calories which allow you to lose weight while eating well. If you are losing more than 1lb or 0.5Kg per week, go here - about how to determine your target weight.
This may be easier if you have a “quotidian diet,” a menu that you enjoy that hits 100% of the RDAs and that is easy enough to prepare that you could eat it almost every day. Think of it as your regular weekday food plan. You don’t have to eat the same thing every day, but if you have a basic plan to fall back on, it’s easier to deviate and still return to something that works. [post examples of quotidian diets at various calorie levels, with some rotation in entrees.]
Continue to weigh and measure your food for at least a month. You’ll find your ability to evaluate portion sizes improves with time, but many of us find that we prefer knowing for sure how much we’re eating, rather than hazarding a guess. The more precisely you measure, the more confidence you can have in the quality of your nutrtion.
Review the forums here, blogs, the nutrition information in COM, and the FAQs for information on how to get hard to find nutrients in low calorie packages. For women, calcium can be a particular concern. For vegetarians and vegans, B vitamins can prove difficult.