Nutrition - Step 1

So as I get older I realize that no matter how active I get I can no longer afford to neglect my diet.  Not only for weight management reasons but for obvious health reasons.  To get down to the weight I want to reach is going to take a little sacrifice.  Not a lot, but some none the less.  Gone are cokes, and other carbonated beverages, replaced now with unsweet tea and water.  Goodbye fast food joints and fried foods, replaced by more meals at home and vegetables.

Still this wasn't quite enough.  Despite what all these different diets may tell you about the secrets to losing weight, one thing remains constant.  Calories.  You must put your body into caloric deficit in order to lose weight.  You must expend more calories, than you consume plain and simple.  In order to do that you have to know how many calories you are taking in.  I chose a website called myfitnesspal.com.  It is a great website with the most comprehensive food catalog I have found.  It is very user friendly and will help you determine how many calories you can take in, in order to achieve your weight loss objectives.  It also allows you to enter your physical activities and will include those calories burned in your net calories.  (BEWARE!!! I believe it overestimates calories burned for most activities).  It also has a smartphone app so you don't have an excuse to not enter foods while out and about.  I use this thing daily for every meal.  It is a virtual food journal and I think I owe a great deal of my success to the help I got from this website.

Next I had to learn to recognize and even embrace hunger.  Fact is in this time of instant gratification we often eat, or snack, or graze at the first hint of hunger.  Ignore this, come up with a plan, be it 3 square meals, 5 small meals, or some other variant, formulate a plan and then stick to it.  Force your body to adjust to your meal schedule, don't conform your meal schedule to your body.

Do not become scale obsessed.  I only step on a scale about once ever two weeks.  For me the minor fluctuations in weight were disheartening and would often discourage me if the number was higher today than it was yesterday.  If you're following your plan you will make progress, don't obsess over some number on a scale.  Look in the mirror, check the fit of your clothes, take stock of how you feel.  These are much better indicators of your progress than your weight.

Finally if you have a heavy day and go over your caloric limit, don't let it be a reason to stop all together.  It isn't the end of the world.  I didn't gain all that weight in one day and so missing the mark on calories one day isn't going to be the end of my progress.  Just realize where you went wrong and try to correct it on subsequent days.

Its working for me.  Last Wednesday I weighed in at 226.0 lbs which is down 24 lbs. from January 1, 2012 and down 34 lbs. from my heaviest weight.  It can be done provided your willing to make some sacrifices.