Things You'll Need:
- Internet access
- Desire to change eating habits
- Place to walk, or exercise
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Step 1
THE BASICS
One pound of weight can be gained for each 3,500 additional calories you consume. Conversely, one pound can be lost for each 3,500 calories burned.
If you drank 2 16 oz of soda daily, that is approximately 300 calories. If you made NO CHANGES in your daily effort than to drink water instead of 2 16 ounce sodas you would lose 1 pound in 10 days.
Invariably I will crave something sweet. There is a pastry shop across the street from my office and we will often get cookies or treats to eat. If I treat myself once a week, and add 500 calorie snack - in 7 weeks, I will gain one pound.
These diet plans work because they will limit your caloric intake through the course of a day. -
Step 2
HEALTHY SUBSTITUTES
Instead of paying a plan to help you with your weight loss efforts look at how you can make changes to your diet.
If you are going on a diet by yourself - you can buy entrees by Weight Watchers, Lean Cuisine, Healthy Choice for your lunch. Those prepared meals have the calories laid out for you and you don't have to think hard about what you are eating. You will also have a wide variety of food to choose from and the variety can help you.
One 2 ounce Snickers bar has 271 calories - you could sub a high fiber chocolate bar with 100 calories and save 171 calories and still get your taste.
One small milkshake from a fast food restaurant has 318 calories, try to make your own smoothie with fresh fruit and low-fat vanilla yogurt for a lot more healthy option. -
Step 3
YOUR TARGET CALORIES
Listed below is a resource for how many calories you need daily to lose weight.
Enter your weight, how much you would like to weigh, your height and it will cover how many calories you will need to lose weight at a safe and healthy pace. -
Step 4
YOUR CALORIE BANKING ACCOUNT - A Simple Spreadsheet
Because of the volume of information, I would keep this on a spreadsheet, but you can write this down on a scrap of paper, the important thing is KEEP UP WITH YOUR CALORIE INTAKE or what you eat daily.
If you need to eat 1,600 calories a day to lose weight without exercise. Let that be your balance.
Example: 1600 calories
7am Sausage Egg McMuffin with Cheese - 450 calories
10am Snack - 100 calorie yogurt
Lunch - 300 calorie - Healthy Choice Meal
3pm Snack - Apple 100 calories
You have 650 calories left,
Dinner - 4oz salmon baked 233 calories, green beans 50 calories, 1/2 cup black eyed peas 150 calories = 433 calories
Snack - bag of 100 calorie popcorn, banana 100 calories
If you keep up with this information and write every morsel you will see the ways you overeat.
CalorieKing.com is added as a resource to track your calories.
Comments
bossypants said
on 5/3/2009 Practical, down to earth, and TRUE information about how the pricey weight loss plans really work. Thanks for simplifying weight loss and showing us how we can do it ourselves. (Your sample day doesn't sound like dieting, at all -- yum!