The refrains are common:  I don't have enough time.  I don't have enough money.  I weigh too much.  I have too much to do. If you've never said one of those things, you can stop reading now, pour yourself a beverage, and go watch a movie.

But, for the rest of us…..

The first step in taking control of your time, money, and weight is to get the information you need.  It's about challenging your perceptions with facts.  We often underestimate what we eat and spend.  We don't recall how we spend our time.  The only way to get a true picture is to build it carefully by tracking what you actually do over a period of time.

If you want to know how you spend your money, start by pulling out a few months of bills to get a sense for what things cost.  You can even do a year's worth.  I know my gas bill is way higher in the winter while my electricity bill is higher in the summer.  By looking at the year, I can balance things out.  Use that to make a basic expense list.  Don't forget automatic deductions or authomatic charges to your credit card.  Then, using a small notebook or your pda, write down everything you spend for at least a week.  If you put 35 cents in the parking meter, write it down.  $2.79 on coffee — in the notebook.  You might be surprised at how much you spend without realizing it.  And, you'll have a handy listing of what you spend money on, so you'll know what you can cut.

You can do similar tracking with your food intake or your time.  What do you eat?  When do you eat it?  What time did you wake up?  When did you leave for work?  What did you do in the interim?  What did you do on your lunch hour? (I wrote this blog.)

Knowing what you actually do is the first step in taking control.  If you find yourself always eating an unhealthy snack before bed, you know that's a danger time.  You can pre-empt that hunger by eating something healthy an hour earlier.  You can identify the pockets of time that appear in your day and plan for ways to use them more productively.

Lots of changes become possible when you have the information you need.