Common Sense Ways to Lose Weight

Read this before you give up on your New Year’s resolution to lose weight!

I recently saw two people I know on social media sharing their frustration that they were not making the progress that they wanted to make with their weight loss. I tried to give each of them some encouragement.

I also realized that there might be a lot of people who are going through the same frustrations, so I thought I would share some of the things I learned when I lost my 100+ pounds.

The first thing I would like to say is don’t expect too much too quickly. It took a long time to put on the extra weight. It is going to take time to lose it.

Also, it is dangerous to your health and can be hard on your heart to lose too much too quickly. Never try to lose more than a pound a week.

You may lose more than that the first couple weeks, but that may be extra fluid and not fat. When you slow down to a pound or less a week don’t get discouraged. That is natural.

Also be careful not to cut calories too drastically. When your body senses it is not getting enough calories it will trigger itself to slow down its metabolism to prevent what the body thinks is starvation.

It is best if you make sure that you eat at least 1500 calories a day to prevent your body from slowing its metabolism.

One more observation I have made is there are those who have the idea that all they need to do is exercise a lot and that is enough to lose weight. What they don’t realize is it would take hours and hours of exercise to make any affect.

After an hour on the treadmill the average person only burns between 150 and 200 calories.

Weightlifting can burn a bit more. An hour of intense weightlifting can burn between 400 and 500 calories. But if you are not watching what you are eating and eat a Burger King Whopper afterwards, (not counting the fries and Coke) you just negated your whole workout.

I would like to share with you some of the things that I have learned during my weight loss journey. If you follow these tips I’m sure you will see positive results.

See your doctor.

You may find out that you have some medical reason why you can’t lose weight. I had a thyroid issue that was bad enough that no matter what I did, I was not going to lose weight.

At first I thought once I was on the medicine I would automatically lose the weight. That wasn’t true, but being on the medicine did enabled me to do what I needed to do to lose the weight and not sabotage my efforts.

The 75/20/5 rule.

A general rule for losing weight that I have found is true is this: to lose weight it is 75% what you eat, 20% resistance training, 5% aerobic training.

A calories deficit is the only true way to lose weight.

It is only logical to do it this way. When you put less in your body than your body uses it will get the fuel from somewhere else, that is, your fat.

Each person’s caloric needs depends on various factors such as age, gender, height and present weight. The Mayo Clinic’s website has a calculator which can calculate how many calories you need daily.

You can also do what I did and download a calorie counting app. The one I use is called LoseIt! I told it my particulars and it calculated how many calories I needed daily. Then I told it I wanted to lose a pound a week and it subtracted 500 calories from what I needed and that became my daily goal.

For those of you who don’t know, a pound of fat is equivalent to 3500 calories. If you subtract 500 calories from what you need daily, in a week you will have taken away 3500 calories the body needed. The body will supply that lack by burning fat. That is how you lose weight.

If you are going to have any success in losing your weight and keeping it off you need to know what you are putting into your body.

Even now after I have lost my weight I still count my calories!

Eat five meals a day.

It may seem like an oxymoron to increase the number of meals to lose weight, but it works. The key is how much you eat at each meal. Each time you eat your metabolism kicks up a notch.

Also each time you eat spicy food your body will burn a few more calories, so if you can stand the hot pepper flakes and jalapenos, then enjoy.

Even though your metabolism burns a few extra calories when you eat, if you are eating 1000 calories per meal, you are going to gain weight.

Keep each meal to around 300 to 500 calories per meal. If you are averaging 400 calories for 5 meals that is around 2000 calories a day. For most people that will be close to their calorie goal for each day.

Know what you are putting in your mouth.

It was a big surprise to me when I started counting calories just how many calories I was eating each day. I had no idea how much I was really eating.

Start by learning to read the labels on your food packages. Some of your favorite foods could be causing weight gain because you didn’t realize how many calories you were eating.

Take pizza for example. I don’t know anyone who is usually satisfied with one slice of pizza. Most people have at least two or three slices. What I learned was pizza has, at a minimum, 300 calories a slice. Depending on the toppings and who is making it, that slice could be 450 calories per slice. Two slices alone then would be 900 calories. That is almost half of most people’s caloric need for the day.

Don’t forget about what you are drinking! Most sodas, unless they are diet, are full of sugar and calories. I stopped drinking soda all together, except once or twice a month, if I go out to eat.

I don’t drink diet soda either, because I don’t think it is safe, but that is another topic.

Speaking of going out to eat, for those of you who like eating at restaurants, losing or maintaining your weight can be a challenge. Most restaurants list the calories for their meals now which is good, but it can be shocking to learn that most meals offered at restaurants are between 1000 and 1800 calories.

I don’t eat at restaurants very often, but when I do I try to make it a practice to divide the meal in half when it is brought to me. Half I eat and half I take home for another meal. By spreading it out over two meals you still get to enjoy good food, but you don’t eat as many calories per meal as you would if you had the whole dinner at the restaurant.

Focus on protein.

Protein is an important part of your diet. Protein builds muscle. You need to keep your muscle tissue strong because the body will try to take energy from wherever it can get it, including your muscle tissue. You don’t want your weight loss to be muscle loss.

Protein can also help raise your metabolism, especially if you weight lift as part of your new lifestyle.

Moderate amounts of Carbs.

Don’t totally cut carbs, but watch what type of carbs and how much you eat. Carbs are generally divided into two types, sugars and starches. You need very little in the way of sugars. Most desserts are full of sugars and they are the easiest thing to break down in your system and be stored as fat. Fruits are generally sugars, but more natural and better than processed sugar. Still be careful having too much.

For myself, I never cared much for fruit, but I have expanded my intake in vegetables which personally I feel is better for you.

As far as starch carbohydrates, that is usually found in things like potatoes and rice. Most of us eat too much of this too. Even though starch is better than sugar, show some moderation. Eat smaller portions of mashed potatoes and rice at your meals.

My weakness is potato chips. I use to sit down to watch a football game and by halftime would consume a whole family size bag. Now I either buy the individual 1 ounce bags or put some in a sandwich bag and limit myself to that.

Exercise is vital.

Though what you eat and how much you eat is the most important thing you need to do, exercise is also important. You need to do a combination of aerobics and resistance training.

For aerobics it can be spending time on a treadmill, taking a walk 3 or 4 times a week, riding a bike, running, or even dancing. Do something that gets your heart pumping. Don’t depend on these exercises alone to lose weight, but they can help. You can also subtract the calories burned by doing these exercises from the calories you eat to stay within your daily goal.

You can also do the same thing for resistance training. By subtracting the calories burned by both aerobic and resistance training you may be able to gain 300 or more calories that day. Many times I just ate the same though and didn’t splurge just because I exercised. It was nice to see those days where I came in 500 calories under budget, mostly because I exercised that day.

Resistance training means doing exercises to strengthen and build your muscles. That doesn’t necessarily mean weight lifting. There is now a variety of ways to do resistance training. Weight lifting is my preference but I also use resistance bands as well as calisthenics, such as pushups and planks.

When I was young, if you wanted to learn a new exercise, you needed to get a book or magazine that had pictures and explanations of the exercises. Now, if want to learn new exercises, all you have to do is download an app and watch the video of an exercise.

Get enough sleep.

Most of us don’t get enough sleep in a night. We don’t allow our bodies to reset itself overnight. You actually can lose the most weight while you sleep. I noticed sometimes, the more I slept, the more I lost. If you don’t get at a minimum seven hours of sleep, you are doing yourself more harm than good. Eight hours would be even better.

Drink plenty of water.

I’m not one of those who is going to stress that you have to drink a certain amount of water. I think it is more of a case by case bases how much is enough. It is important to keep yourself hydrated though.

Set goals.

Usually everyone who wants to lose weight has a big goal of just how many pounds they want to lose. I started with wanting to lose 90 pounds.

To get to that big goal you need to set smaller goals. Each time you reach a smaller goal you get more encouragement to reach the main goal. I started with 15 pounds. Once I reached that I determined to lose 15 more pounds. Eventually, I lost the 90 pounds and saw I wanted to go further. Eventually I lost 113 pounds reaching a goal of weighing 175 pounds which I hadn’t weighed since I was a teenager.

Also it is good to set weekly goals such as how many times you are going to work out in a week or how many walks you will take.

Build habits.

You spent a lifetime building up bad habits which ended up getting you overweight. Retrain the way you think and do things so that you have good, healthy habits which will enable you to maintain your weight even after you have lost your weight.

Make it a lifestyle not a diet.

Mentally, this is probably the most important thing to do to prevent gaining the weight back after you have lost it. You hear so many people say how they lost weight but then went off their diet and gained all the weight back and then some more.

If you go on a diet to lose weight, more than likely you will gain the weight back because the moment you stop dieting all you are going to do is go back to doing what caused you to gain your weight in the first place.

You don’t need a diet. You need a new lifestyle. You need to learn to do things differently in a way that is sustainable for a lifetime. If you do that you will feel so much better about yourself and wonder why you didn’t do it sooner.

Lastly, Patience.

You are going to make mistakes. You are going to have days where you eat too much. Don’t get frustrated and give up. Look at every day as a new start, any mistakes from the day before is in the past. Today is a new day and a new start.

Also have patience when the weight doesn’t come off as quickly as you want. Maybe you lost 5 or 10 pounds the first couple weeks, but now the needle on the scale isn’t moving as fast as it was. Don’t get upset. A lot of the time, the first couple weeks you were losing extra fluid. Now the real work starts.

It took me three years to lose that 113 pounds. During that time I hit about four plateaus where I didn’t lose a pound for a month. Just keep at it and eventually it will happen.

I did it and I know you can to. Believe in yourself. Become the next great transformation.

Rediscover your life.