Want To Lose Weight - Do The Math

Ohhh noesssssss not math! Unfortunately yes, even in achieving fitness or weight loss goals math is involved. Think of this, for every pound of weight loss, 3,500 calories need to be expended. So, how do we do that? One way is to keep a food diary. To be able to subtract at least 3,500 calories from your diet, you need to know how many foods you are taking in on a daily or weekly basis. Start by writing down what you eat every day. All of it. The breakfast you had with pancakes, syrup, and sausages, write it down. The sandwich and soup you had, write it down. Dinner, same thing. Snacks, same thing. Then make each item one entry and find how many calories are in them. Let's say you had 3 delicious buttermilk pancakes from IHOP. That comes out to around 490 calories. A half a cup of maple syrup is around 420 calories. Three breakfast sausages add up to 180 calories. Once you see how many calories you are taking in, you can start decreasing them.

After you have done the work of finding out how much you eat per day and how much calories are contained therein, you can start making substitutions or cutting out certain things on a daily basis. If you love pancakes, for instance, you can substitute with frozen pancakes. For 3, you use up just 240 calories. That is half of what was contained in the IHOP pancakes. If you absolutely can't forsake the IHOP pancakes, eat less of them. Instead of 3 pancakes, eat 1 or 2 and save the third for another day. Your goal for the week is to cut out 3,500 calories from your diet. The best way to do that is to try to eat 500 calories less each day. 500 times 7 is 3500. A 500 calorie deficit wont be so shocking to your system. It's better to take a little off everyday and maintain the loss, instead of taking a lot off, starving and then binging once your will power is broken or once your body has had enough and screams FEED ME!!

The biggest job here is to get an idea of the calories contained in the foods you love to eat. Then you just need to habitually cut out little things here and there. You'll be surprised to find out how much you are eating, how easy it is to cut down, and how quickly the weight comes off.

Programs like Jenny Craig and Weight Watchers are powerful. They count the calories for you, and if you follow them correctly, weight loss is assured. But if you want to empower yourself, save money and gain a skill that you can pass on to friends and family members, try the method listed above. Learn the amount of calories contained in the foods you eat, reduce those calories and then reap the benefits of that knowledge. Weight loss is easy when you do the math.