Based on the energy functional and variational method, we present a new method to investigate the ground state properties for a weakly interacting Bose-condensed gas in an anisotropic harmonic trap at zero temperature. With this method we are able to find the analytic expression of the ground-state wavefunction and to explore the relevant quantities, such as energy, chemical potential, and the aspect ratio of the velocity distribution. These results agree well with previous ground state numerical solutions of the Gross-Pitaevskii equation given by Dalfovo et al. [Phys. Rev. A 53 (1996) 2477] This new method is simple compared to other methods used to solve numerically the Gross-Pitaevskii equation, and one can obtain analytic and reliable results.