Diet Write: A 3-Month Food and Fitness Journal

by Suzette Kroll-Barancik, RD
(Tucson, AZ)

Genre: Health

I'm a dietitian. I've always had a fantasy that I'd be the author of the next best selling diet book. You know...the one that everybody is talking about on Jan 1. It would be so big, Oprah would be begging for it to be read by her book club and I'd be invited to be interviewed on her show. Celebrities and real people alike would be lining up to buy it. My name would eventually become a household word like "Atkins." (I guess "Barancik" doesn't have quite the same ring.)

The only problem is, I'm a dietitian with morals. I know that diets don't work in the long run and while being famous and rich would certainly be nice, I just can't sell out my integrity in order to write some gimmicky book that people would mistake for the ultimate, miraculous "cure" for obesity. Another problem is that I'm selfish. I want to be known for what I do...forever. Not for only one diet season. I would want my writing to be timeless.

It eventually dawned on me that I wanted/needed to write a diet journal. It's a simple tool that every dieter uses (or should use) to keep track of food intake and I could create one that could be used with any diet plan or program. In my own experience using a food journal, I had trouble finding one that had space to keep track of the nutrients, exercise, energy level, etc. that I felt were important to track. In fact, with my own clients, I would find myself creating journal pages to meet a particular client's needs. I never used a one-diet-journal-fits-all approach.

Keeping in mind that I always wanted to write a book as well, I figured I would add my professional advice about dieting and weight loss and my own experiences in order to make the diet journal more valuable and to feel like the important things I needed to say were getting known.

I'm a genius, I thought! Every publisher in the country would want to publish my journal. Why wouldn't they want it?! Simple concept, credible author, and endless sales potential. After all, it was a book that people would have to buy over and over each time it got full of food records. The potential was endless. Maybe I wasn't going to be famous, but I most certainly was going to be rich.

Boy, was I wrong.

I researched and wrote a book proposal over 1-2 months and was fortunate enough (I believed) to actually have 2 pretty famous agents look at it. (This occurred only as a result of connections though my workplace). They both agreed I had all my "i"s dotted and "t"s crossed, but they came to the same conclusion...

...it's not gimmicky enough.

I believed my proposal must not have been clear enough, and these people just didn't understand what I was trying to accomplish. "My bad," but I didn't want to write the proposal again. I was itching to just write the diet journal and I thought, hey if I have something to physically show someone rather than just a hypothetical proposal, I would be in a better position.

I started getting suggestions from my friends and family to self publish. I did a little research and asking around and found out about 2 self publishing houses: Author House and Lulu.

I decided on Lulu because it seemed like a straightforward and simple process and I felt I could control my own destiny. No money had to be spent out of pocket. All I had to do was write my diet journal, put a cover on it (Lulu had many to choose from), upload it to Lulu and then it would be printed on demand.

Sounded pretty simple to me. I took a 3 month leave of absence to work on it (and try to start my own business at the same time). The writing was very simple for me. The formatting was another story. It was a nightmare in fact.

Lulu offered various services, but formatting wasn't one of them as I recall. Either that, or they did offer the service for a fee that I wasn't willing to pay.

Things that were probably very simple took me weeks to learn how to do...like use Excel to create tables, add numbers to pages, convert a word file to a pdf file, etc. Lulu was very helpful with the latter. I listened to a couple of webinars on the site to learn how to do it. I recall there was online help or email correspondence that was very helpful too.

When it came time to add the cover, I decided I didn't love the pickings on Lulu so I went about hiring an artist to create one for me (I found her on guru.com).

Finally, I was able to convert my word document to a pdf, upload it to Lulu, add a cover and voila...my diet journal was finally ready to purchase.

So I did just that. In fact, I had to purchase it in order to determine that all the formatting came out right, because there was no way to preview it. I anticipated the arrival in the mail for days and have to admit, when I finally tore open the package, I was pretty disappointed in how it looked. It looked flimsy, the paper looked cheap, it didn't look thick enough, and frankly, it looked self published. Oh yeah, my formatting was off too. After reformatting 3 times, (and ordering and waiting anxiously for it to arrive in the mail 3 times) I finally got it right.

And now...

...it sits on Lulu (see it). Waiting for the demand to be printed.

When I decided I wanted to be in control of my own destiny by using a print on demand publisher, I never realized I would need to be in control of the marketing too.

This whole process took ~ 6 months. Perhaps because I'm not really happy with how it looks, I haven't summoned the energy to promote it. Lulu offers marketing services on the site, but I've never taken advantage.

I use the diet journal with my own clients, and I sell it on my website, but that's about it. Writing about it here has reminded me of how passionate about it I was at one time and has possibly lit the fire under my buns to do some touch up work on it and hit the marketing trail....

Visit Suzette's website, Your Personal Nutrition Guide.