Category: Questions

The principle that weight loss is entirely related to consuming fewer calories than we use is a good principle to focus on when starting a diet.

As your knowledge of food, exercise, and dieting increases you can take this principle and tweak it to maximize your results, but in the beginning you don’t want to complicate things too much, so just focus on tracking calories.

Why Track Calories?

1. In the simplest terms, we lose weight if we consume less than we use.
2. Tracking calories will force you to actually see how many calories you are consuming rather than assume. Normally the difference between what we actually eat and what we think we eat is drastic.
3. Tracking calories will dramatically increase your knowledge of the approximate macronutrients in foods (calories, fat, carbs, fiber, sugar, protein). This leads to making better decisions about which foods to eat.
4. Tracking calories will prevent you from losing focus on your diet because you will be active in your new habit of ‘dieting’ throughout the day as you track.
5. Tracking calories shows in stark terms the impact that food, as opposed to exercise can have on the energy in – energy out equation.
   • Would you rather eat a 300 calorie slice of cake or walk 3 miles to burn it off?
   • the path towards a healthier weight is 80% dietary habits and 20% exercise habits

So you’ve finally built the determination to get healthier and start a diet.

Now, where do you start?

The world of eating healthy and dieting, which are sometimes at odds, is vast, diverse, and sometimes complex depending on how deep you want to go.

In the beginning start with just 2 basics:

1. Realize that to maintain a lifelong healthy weight, or look good naked (depending on your goal), you will need to eventually adopt an overall healthier lifestyle rather than jumping in and out of diet mode. For now though, we are going to focus on diet mode since we assume you have some pounds to lose.
2. To keep things simple, concentrate on calorie tracking.

By focusing on calorie tracking you get to the main cause of weight gain – eating more calories than you burn or utilize.

There is more to it than just calories in calories out, but at the beginning at focus on this alone will allow you to take large first steps in tackling weight loss.

If you have become self aware of the state of your physical health, the time to start living a healthier lifestyle is . . . now – IMMEDIATELY!

Don’t wait till you know it all and have the answers to every question – you never will.

Start with a couple quick changes that you already know will be beneficial.

Don’t wait till ‘tomorrow’ because’ today is your last non diet day’ – instead realize you will not have more determination tomorrow, you will have less.

SO START NOW!

You don’t need a gym membership, you don’t need to know about every ‘fat loss secret’, and you don’t need ‘the right diet’.

Start with 1 or 2 easy changes and work from there.

Do you see yourself in the comic below:

 

 

 

 

Good, recognize this for the false premise it is. You won’t start next Monday. Get this ‘I have to start on a set date’ idea out of your head.

START NOW!!