If you've checked out the images for this post, I'll have to add in a little disclaimer: I'm not new to dieting. I've given it a shot several times in the past couple of years. I'm not new to health and fitness or the world of nutrition. Before I felt I needed to diet, I felt I needed to build muscle, and did my fair share of research in the world of nutrition. I'm also not new to
DietPower, the application I use to keep track of my dieting progress, and the application that generates the readouts given in this post.
What I am new to is sticking with my diet! I've finally figured out why, and I'm gonna tell you.
#1: Keep it simple. One of the biggest reasons I failed at my past attempts at diet in the past is that they were too complicated. My first attempt at starting a consistent diet consisted of me doing about a week of research and preparation, making sure I had all my facts straight, lest I should make some fatal error and end up realizing I've wasted time months down the road -- My perfectionism was my downfall. I not only tracked calories, but protein, saturated and unsaturated fat, sugars, fiber, vitamin, iron, cholesterol, phosphorus and folic acid. Bad idea. What I ended up doing was skipping one part of my recording process and then thinking, "Man, I'm so bad at keeping track of all this stuff... I'm just going to forget about it for the rest of the day." Eventually this would turn into "...I'll just forget about it for the rest of the week," and my diet would effectively fall into ruin. The bottom line:
If you are simply interested in losing weight, focus on calories, and just keep an eye on your protein/fat/carb percentages.#2: Don't be afraid to estimate. A corollary to my first point, some people are compelled to keep detailed records of every aspect, trying to be as precise as possible. I say, get rid of this habit as early as possible! You should certainly try and be reasonably accurate, using known figures when available, but when it's time to guess portions without a measuring cup and a scale handy, you're going to have to use your estimation skills a little bit. Know what a cup of vegetables and 3 ounces of chicken breast looks like and guess from there. Remember and write down what foods you eat, and look them up afterwards on a nutritional website such as
NutritionData.com (a personal favorite). If you are guessing objectively,
a daily net difference of +/- 200 calories isn't going to make a large difference in the short term, and should even balance itself out over time -- Which brings me to my next point:
#3: Plan for the long-term. As a rule of thumb, aim to lose
no more than 2 lbs./week. This is not a target amount or a minimum, this is a maximum. Also remember that 1 lb. of fat is approximately 3500 calories. There are pleny of calculators that will tell you your BMR (basal metabolic rate) and help you estimate your net metabolic rate. For the average college age man, this should be around 3,000 calories a day, more if you have a fairly active lifestyle.
For example, according to
this BMR calculator my BMR is right around 2000 calories exactly, +/- 50 or so. I also know, from the data DietPower has gathered from me, that I expend a total of 3269 calories per day, as of today. This means that I am losing 1269 calories per day, assuming I eat only enough to compensate my BMR. 2 lbs./week would mean a 7000 calorie deficit per week, which means that I should aim to have a net deficit of 1000 calories per day. This means I can eat up to 2269 calories per day and still lose 2 lbs./week.
For planning and recording purposes, I highly recommend
DietPower, which I've mentioned several times already. It comes with a nutritional database containing thousands of foods and is relatively simple to use.
#4: Set realistic goals. Instead of determining to wake up the next morning, run a mile, stretch, and eat health foods every day from then on, start with one individual goal and incorporate that into your life. I highly recommend starting with changing your eating habits first -- you will start to feel the benefits from healthier eating within the week, even if you're simply skipping out on a couple of those donuts or some of those coke cans (notice I said
some, not all ;). Then begin to incorporate exercise a couple weeks down the road.
For the long term, figure out how many weeks it will take you to reach your target weight. If possible, get a professional to give you an accurate body fat percentage measurement. Then, ask the staff at the local gym how you can figure out a reasonable target weight. For those of you who (like me) would rather look it up online, you can find a good guide
here. If you set your goals too high, you won't reach them.
Set an easy goal for yourself and, if you feel as though you can sacrifice more later on, do so.#5: Get into the habit of recording what you eat. Don't rely on your memory as an accurate record as to what you've eaten and how many calories you've consumed for the day. Unless you have an incredible memory, this will be extremely difficult to do, and unreliable at best. Instead, make an effort to write down what and how much you've eaten after each meal, and then look up the amount of calories you've consumed.
Make this a habit and keep your logs for the length of the diet.#6: Find a source of motivation. Some people are motivated by testimonials, some are motivated by pictures of their goal. Pictures of fitness models motivate me the best. I've managed to keep my current diet alive with a wallpaper from the movie 300 on my desktop, with the characters posing the six-pack that I'm aiming for. I imagine myself in the movie, pulling off all those cool combat moves with a sleek, athletic body. Testimonials don't excite me so much. However, for you, it might be the other way around. Hearing real stories from real people can go a long way to inspire someone to be persistent in achieving their goals.
Find what inspires you, and saturate yourself with it.This is another reason I recommend DietPower. It keeps a record of almost every aspect of your fitness imaginable, which is great for a perfectionist like me. This can provide a source of inspiration later on if you've been faithful to your diet, as you'll be able to see charts showing you that you are making progress in your diet.
#7: Define "Cheating". Because you'll more than likely be trying to find loopholes around that definition in moments of severe temptation. To me, "Cheating" is eating too much early in the day or eating something that I know will take me over my calorie budget for the day. That means that I allow myself to eat just about anything -- chocolate, ice cream, whatever. I do keep in mind, however, that if I only eat these kinds of foods, not only will they be a detriment for my health but they are not sufficiently filling for the amount of calories they offer. I've found that most healthy foods I have access to are quite filling for the amount of calories they offer, thus I tend to stick with healthy foods.
Discover which foods are the most tempting for you and stay away from them, too! For me an example would be tortilla chips. I
love tortilla chips. Once I start eating them, I could eat them all day. This and french fries. This is why I've made a largely successful effort to stay away from large quantities of either of the two.
#8: Do not be disappointed by failure. It's nice to be able to brag about having gone an entire six months without having drank any soda or eaten any chocolate. However, you must keep in focus the point of your diet. Unless you are dieting to impress your friends (a terrible reason to do anything, I might add), you should be concerned about your health and perhaps your appearance.
Having the occasional soda or donut or bar of chocolate will hurt you much less in the long run than will retaining that extra 50 lbs. of weight. Note the large spike on my calorie history graph, and note the the negligible effect (or lack thereof) on the history graph.
The biggest issue with failing your diet is the feeling of lost self-worth and disappointment, not so much the extra calories you've consumed. On most occasions someone has "failed" on their diet for the day, they are in fact still under their net metabolic rate for the day and will still end up losing some weight, albeit less. It is the psychological effect of having failed a goal that will cost you your happiness and, eventually, your diet.
#9: Don't give up, adjust. A while back, a friend of mine began a diet, and asked me for some advice. I told her that she should aim for 1700 calories per day, which I believe would've been more than enough for her to feel full at the end of the day and still lose weight. Unfortunately this did not turn out to be true, and she soon quit her diet. My advice to those who begin a diet and are struggling with keeping up with it would be to consume more filling foods with less calories (salads work for me) instead of high-calorie, sugary foods. If that's not enough, increase your budget. It could be that you have an abnormally high metabolic rate.
So long as you're under your net metabolic rate for the day -- consuming less than you expend -- you will lose weight.#10: Don't overcompensate your failure. If you go over your calorie budged for the day, one of the worst remedies for this is to compensate the loss by subtracting the difference from your next day's budget. This is especially true if you've gone over by more than 100 or so calories. Your chances of failing again are much higher, which will only push you into a depressing cycle of failed compensation attempts.
If you go over, just forget about it the next day. Pretend it never happened.
As a final note, I advise everyone to do some research into the world of nutrition and fitness. Take everything you hear with a grain of salt, especially anything that sounds very optimistic. Avoid fad diets, don't be too afraid of carbs, and don't forget your unsaturated fats.
These graphs are very inspiring to me.
