All diets are based on the same premise: eat fewer calories and you will lose weight.
Diets come in all sizes and flavors and all tend to be based on the lowest calorie formula, despite claims to the contrary. The peanut butter diet is low in calories with a little peanut butter at each meal. The cabbage soup diet consists of unlimited amounts of cabbage soup, but how much cabbage soup can you eat before you get tired, meaning you’ll eat fewer calories? The Atkins diet, the SouthBeach diet, and even Weight Watchers are all based on the idea that you’ll consume fewer calories than your body requires, therefore you’ll lose weight. No one on Atkins estimated that people would eat two pounds of cheese and a pound of bacon every day, yet some people do exactly that and then freak out when their weight loss stalls.
My current diet includes a small piece of chocolate cake and a pint of Haagen Daz most every night.
You can design a diet around any food you want. Do you like cheesecake? How about the cheesecake diet? Three very low-calorie meals a day plus a small slice of cheesecake equals the cheesecake diet. Do you love French fries? Here’s the French Fry Diet: Eat three very low-calorie meals a day, with a small portion of French fries to go, and you’re on the French Fry Diet. The chosen focus food is what the diet developer wanted, in a reduced serving size to provide the common suggested amounts of 1,200 to 1,600 calories per day. The fewer calories you have, the faster the initial weight loss will be; at least that is the expected result. Remember those liquid protein fasts (Oprah wore this the first time she hit a size 10)? Liquid protein fasts were once very popular until a few people died, and that broke them down quickly.
The sad truth is that we want to believe diet providers’ lies so badly that we’ll try anything, and that’s why the diet industry is a multi-billion dollar industry. If these diets worked like The Zone, Perricone Prescription, Life Choice (opposite of Atkins), Negative Calorie Diet, etc. Wouldn’t we see obesity rates slowly fall, instead of seeing them continue to rise?
design your own diet
A more reasonable approach of choosing foods you like, estimating how many calories would be reasonable for your body size and designed body weight, and then getting started is usually met with derision and derision. I’ve heard, “2000 calories a day? I’m going to blow up like a balloon!” No, you will not. You will lose weight, although slower than the other more drastic diets, wouldn’t you rather lose it for good this time?
How can you lose weight eating 2,000 calories a day? Think about it. The typical adult woman eats around 3,500 calories a day, believe it or not. Our typical lady, Carol, eats lunch at McDonalds every day, has a StarBucks Latte every morning on her way to work, drinks four cups of coffee with cream throughout the day, makes two donuts on breaks, and stops for chicken takeout. . for dinner. She “indulges” with ice cream and a half-pack of Oreos for dessert. Let’s see how many calories can be:
Typical American Meal Plan for Adults:
Breakfast: Skipped, we are taking care of our figure.
Snack: StarBucks on the way to work; Caffe Mocha with whole milk and whipped cream, venti (20 Oz) = 530 calories
Total morning: 530
Lunch: McDonald’s Big-n-Tasty with cheese; 540 calories
Large French Fries 610 calories
Large Coca-Cola (20 oz) 250 calories
Apple Pie – 265 calories
Lunch Total: 1665
Snack: Sugarless gum – 0
During the day: 4 cups of coffee with half-n-half – 160 calories (from half-n-half)
Break: Donuts – glazed, two Krispy Kreme – 424
Snacks and breaks: 512
Dinner: Kentucky Fried Chicken Dinner
3-Piece Meal: Extra Crispy Drumstick, Two Extra Crispy Drumsticks, Potato Wedges, and Pound Cake: 1,420 calories
Large soda (20 oz): 250 calories
Small plate ice cream (1 cup): 260 calories
Total Dinner: 1930
Watch TV at night:
Oreos – 10 cookies (about 1/3 of a package): 530 calories
Afternoon snacks: 530
Grand Total: 5,167
You may think it’s ridiculous, but I think it’s conservative. Maybe you wouldn’t have had exactly this menu, but the point is that we’re eating a lot more calories than we realize.
If you cut down to 2,000 calories a day, you’ll be eating far fewer calories and probably losing a pound a week or more. If you don’t think it’s fast enough, you’ll probably still be overweight. Your body can’t add or subtract muscle and fat faster. The fastest weight loss is water loss and it comes back as soon as you eat regular food again. Remember, losing it slowly means losing it permanently. The math is not accurate. I lost 80 pounds in nine months, which was actually 2.07 pounds per week.
Would you be happy if this time next year you were at your ideal weight?
If at the end of a year you had lost 100 pounds (or whatever you need to lose if it’s less than 100 pounds), wouldn’t you be happy? The more weight you need to lose, the faster it will come off initially. However, it is not what the scale says that matters. What matters is do you feel better? Are you able to bend over more and even reach your toes maybe? Can you get up more easily from a sitting position? Walking is more pleasant, do your clothes feel looser? These are the things that matter. Has your blood pressure returned to normal?
Track what you eat for a week, that is, what you actually eat. Don’t push yourself to eat better or less. That is not useful for this exercise. You want to catch yourself being yourself. Write it down on paper, what you really eat on a regular basis. If you eat out, you are likely to consume a lot more calories than you think. We all wonder how we can’t lose weight, so we grab a 600 calorie coffee drink! Think about it.
Once you have your weekly eating routine on paper, you can take a look to see what changes you could make. For example, by switching from a Caffe Mocha to a Caffe Latte two days a week, you would save 540 calories right there. Once you’re used to that switch, go one step further and switch to a Caffe Latte every day and you’re now saving 1,960 calories a week. Take it a step further and switch to a Skinny Latte (skim milk instead of whole milk) and you’ll save another 100 calories per day, which means you’ve gone from an extra 3,780 calories per week from your morning Starbucks to just 1,120 calories per week, or a 2660 calorie savings. Here’s how you can keep your Starbucks habit, but make one small change and suddenly you’re not adding to the problem, but you’re on your way to losing that pound a week. The less fancy drink also costs less, so you can put that money toward the new clothes you’ll want soon.
Track your eating and you’ll have a better idea of what’s going on
For the next seven days, write down everything you put in your mouth and start keeping an eye on your eating patterns. I use a simple software program called Food & Exercise Diary for Windows. Making an effort to write down what you eat helps keep me on track, plus what I’ve eaten and how much I’ve exercised six months ago is still right at my fingertips. That’s especially helpful when you develop a routine that works for you because you can always go back and see what you did differently, if you find yourself gaining weight back a year later.
One of the best things I ever did was keep track of my weight training and eating habits when I got in shape all those years ago. Now to reproduce the results I can go back and see what I did before and basically do the same thing again. Learn from your successes, keep a journal. So, don’t make the mistake of trimming too much because it’s simply not necessary. Just cut around 500 calories per day and you’ll be on your way with a lot less trauma in the process.
Design a diet that fits your lifestyle and you’ll have a winning plan for the rest of your life.
