Last year my New Years resolution was to change the first number of of weight. From a 2 to a 1. I had to lose 30 pounds to get there. I’ve tryed to lose weight before and it was fairly easy to see the pitfalls that had led to failure. I decided to not read any books, or do any real research online as to how to lose weight. Instead, I made some rules for myself:
- Any diet that makes you only eat a small group of things will fail.
- Any diet that deprives you from eating specific things will fail.
- Any diet that involves going to the gym will fail*
I realized that in previous weight-loss attempts, I had been over doing it. Trying to eat better AND less AND go to the gym AND watch calories is way too much to try at the same time. So, I decided to eat the exact same things I have always eaten, just a little less of them.
I found that to be very difficult, all by its self. In part because I had no idea how many calories were in anything. I mean really. Until my late 20′s I was always rail-thin, regardless of what I ate, so I never had to pay attention to the caloric value of anything. So my first step was to figure out how many calories I was taking in. I found a great iPhone app called LoseIt that has a database of 70,000 foods and their caloric value. It also calculates how many calories you need, based on height and weight.
At 6′ 2″ and 230 pounds, I was entitled to somewhere around 2800 calories a day. The app also lets you set some goals, like if you want to lose pound a week, it will tell you that instead of eating 2800 calories a day, you should eat 2400. I found that to be a great approach. Simple: 3500 calories are in a pound of fat. Reduce the number of calories your body takes in and your body will burn some fat reserves trying to maintain.
Because it was so simple, I was able to stick with it, because I wasn’t really depriving myself of anything. I still ate ice cream, just not a pint of ice cream.
Doing that alone, I lost about 15 pounds, over about 3 months. After that, my body figured out that there was a new sherrif in town and I plateaued.
So, Archie’s weight loss tip number one is Eat the same stuff, just less of it. Don’t try and get fancy, just eat a few less calories a day.
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