I finally found a way to lose weight.
The good news for you is it doesn’t require a fad diet, does not require spending huge gobs of money, doesn’t have complicated rules, and best of all, you can “cheat” and it still works.
What Doesn’t Work for Me
I have tried lots of popular and famous diets. One where the focus was on eating meat. Another one from a famous productivity author. Yet another that had you eat like you are a caveman. One that came with a set of exercise videos didn’t even get started.
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Other than complete and miserable failure, they all had in common a “guaranteed to fail” built in.
Either they said a certain food was verboten, and thus made me crave it, or the ingredients were hard to come by, or I just couldn’t understand the system enough to work within it. If you go to a restaurant and can not order for fear of getting it wrong, then you are not going to stick with it.
How I Lost Weight
My doctor told me “Move more, eat less”.
That wasn’t particularly useful advice so I went with something just a tad more conscious.
I downloaded an app for my iPhone!
This app keeps you accountable and keeps a log for you. So far you could just use a notepad or a spreadsheet.
What it also does is makes it easy to record calories and exercise (or carbs, whatever, it’s really flexible). You tell it what foods you have eaten and what exercise you take, and it works out what you have left each day in your calorie budget.
I have my phone with me all the time so I can consciously choose what goes in my mouth rather than guess. As well as a really comprehensive list of foods and brands, you can also add your own custom preferences.
When Things Go Wrong
Of course you will slip, get into bad habits, and generally have off days (or weeks).
Doing it this way helps you prevent making bad choices (because you are often thinking about food in a way that you make a decision rather than “follow your gut”), allows you to work out exactly where you went wrong, and get you back on track.
Most people focus just on the calories, which obviously is only one part of the equation. Nutrition is not just about calorie counting but it is a start. A next step is to focus more on the exercise part. The good news is it helps in those areas too.
