I'm down about 30 pounds from when I started losing weight in March. I still have about 70 pounds go go. I'm not an expert. I'll be an expert when I've lost all the weight, and kept it off for five years. But I've learned some things.
Keep a food journal. It's the most effective thing you can do. Write down everything you eat and drink. Once you do that, you will become conscious of your food habits, and start making changes for weight loss. It's almost automatic. Just keep a food journal, everything else will follow. A study by Kaiser Permanente showed that keeping a food journal doubles your weight loss.
I use the Lose It! app for the iPhone to track my calories, weight, and exercise. It doesn't really matter what you use. You can use pen and paper.
Your food journal is a mystic, magic weapon that sets you on the path to weight loss. It focuses your mind on what you're eating and when, and you'll start naturally figuring out how to lose weight from there. Just start keeping a food journal, the rest will follow.
Follow a sensible diet. Avoid fads. Weight Watchers is good. I've been counting calories, a technique that's more than a hundred years old. It works. Losing weight is simple physics: If your calories consumed is less than the amount you spend exercising, you'll lose weight. Lose It includes an automated tool for figuring your target calories. About.com has one on the Web. You can find out the calories in food by reading packages and, for fresh produce and meals out, you can Google the calorie counts. Just Google "(name of food) calories." For example, apples calories.
When you tell people you're looking to lose weight, everyone will tell you how they did it, which is the One True Way. This possibly includes me, in this blog post, although I'm trying to avoid it. Some people will swear by the Zone, some people swear by Atkins, some people lay off processed food or refined flours or white sugar or corn syrup. One person even swore to me that the way to lose weight was to avoid eating white foods. The right way is the way that works for you.
The right way should involve eating a balanced diet, and you shouldn't really ever be hungry.
If you're not eating a balanced diet, and you're fighting hunger, you might (1) Make yourself sick or (1)(b) dead. And I guarantee you won't keep off whatever weight you lose. I guarantee it.
Exercise is supremely important to your health. But exercise alone won't make you lose weight. I exercised regularly for a year before I started counting calories, and I actually gained a few pounds during that time.
On the other hand, exercise helps you keep weight off, and it has other health benefits. It's like a magic anti-aging pill.
Don't say you're "on a diet." Saying, "I'm on a diet," implies it will be a temporary thing, that you'll go off the diet when you've lost the weight. Then you do that, and gain all your weight back.
Weight loss requires a fundamental lifestyle change. It's forever. I figure I'll be counting calories, weighing myself weekly, and keeping a food diary until the day I die. I have a disability--my autonomic nervous system doesn't tell me when I've had enough to eat. As with any other disability, I need to compensate for it.
Lose weight slowly. About 1-2 pounds a week or so is healthy. My doctor says 0.5-2 pounds.
Give yourself a break every once in a while. Every couple of months, my wife or our friend Barbara cooks a really nice meal, or we go to a favorite restaurant, and I just put away the food journal and I eat and drink whatever the heck I want.
If you think you're never going to eat a big bowl of ice cream, or a plate of french fries doused in ketchup, you're going to make yourself miserable. Knowing you can have those foods every once in a while makes it easier for you to not have them most of the time.
A week or two ago, I had a breakfast meeting at a local delicatessen, DZ Akins. I planned ahead of time what I would have for breakfast: Two eggs over easy, wheat toast, coffee. That's all.
When I got to the restaurant, I walked past diners eating big, heavy plates of fancy omelets and hash browns and pancakes and French toast loaded with syrup. If I thought I could never have those things again, I would have made myself miserable and probably had a big plate of them anyway and felt guilty about it. Instead, I just said to myself, "Those look awfully good. I'll have to come back again sometime and have a big plate of that." And then I sat down at my table and ordered the light breakfast I'd planned.
Looks like you've got the system down. So I'll only toss in one "This is how we did it"... :)
I gave up dairy in my early 20s, when I discovered i was lactose intolerant. I still weigh the same as I did then.
When I met my wife, she was about 40 pounds overweight. She gave up dairy, too - she'd been thinking about it, but everyone in her family ate tons of it (and got fat). It was easier to do once she was hanging out with me... and she lost the 40 pounds. She looks great, if I do say so myself.
Anyway... good for you for doing the hard work! :)
(Found you via Xeni; I'm an old buddy of Cory's)
Posted by: Jeremy Bloom | December 01, 2009 at 11:14 AM
Keeping a journal is a good start. This way, you'll know how far you have achieved with regards to loss weight. Having little achievements is better compared of having nothing at all right?
Posted by: lose baby weight | March 09, 2010 at 09:32 PM