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This is Your Weight Loss Plan

What are your issues?

It may be easier to answer these questions if you think about the issues that have made you overweight to begin with. Look back at the answers you gave to "What food means to you.

1. Will you be able to make wiser food choices?
2. Will you be able to keep yourself from bingeing or otherwise violating your own rules?
3. Can you substitute some high-calorie foods with equally satisfying but lower­ calorie choices?
4. Will you be able to avoid the triggers that make you eat more than you should?
5. Will you be able to enlist the help and support of the people around you?

May be getting enough exercise is more of a problem issue for you than food.

1. What is keeping you from being active?
2. Can You begin to include more exercise in your daily routine?
3. Can you manage to step up one rung on the lifestyle activity ladder?

Plan your daily calorie expenditure

You may be wondering why i have put calories-out before calories-in. The short answer is: It's simpler that way.

Planning for the plateau There's another reason to focus on activity first. Call it the plateau, the set point, or whatever you like, as soon as you begin losing weight, your metabolic rate will go down and so will your calorie needs. If you started off as a 180-pound man with a BMR of 1,980, your BMR will be only 1,870 as soon as you become a l70-pound man. It will probably be even lower than that because your body, in its "wisdom," will have shifted into famine mode. However, when you were a 180-pound man, you gave yourself an extra 30 percent for being somewhat active. If you have added activity along with your diet, you may be able to make that an extra 40 percent which will raise your metabolic rate so you can, in fact, eat a few more calories. Here's the math:

As somewhat active 180 pound man, you needed 2,574 calories daily (1,980 +30%).

As a moderately active 170- pound man you need 2,618 calories daily (1,870 + 40%).

Look at your activity diary

If you kept an activity diary for a week or more, turn to that page now. How many calories did you expend in that week? Was it spread out evenly over all seven days or did you do most of your sweating on a single day or over the weekend? There's no wrong answer to my second question. It's simply an important piece of information as you apply what you know about yourself.

Is there time in each day - say an extra half hour - for a bit more activity? Or is your weekly schedule such that weekends are the best time for exercise? Is there a particular part of the day that is better suited to activity? Are you too rushed in the morning or too tired at night? Do you work when other people play and vice versa? Does the availability of other members of your family or friends influence when you are more or less likely to be active?

Here's a modest proposal: See if you can add 100 calories worth of activity to each day or a total of 700 calories to your week. Write down some things you like to do and check out one of the many online activity calculators. How many minutes of each one adds up to 100 calories? If it seems like too much, write in as much time as you think you can spend and promise yourself that you'll revisit this question at a later date. If you can do more, be my guest!

Now, divide your weekly total by 7 and subtract the answer from the number you circled as "My daily calorie goal." Circle the new number and label it "My daily calorie intake goal." That's the number you're going to work with when planning what you eat.

Plan your daily calorie intake

The next step is obvious. Take out your food diary and compare your daily calorie intake goal with your actual daily calorie intake. The result may shock you.

If your daily calorie intake fluctuated wildly over the course of a week, divide the weekly total by 7 to get a daily average.

Subtract the goal from the actual. That's how many calories you have to get off your plate. For example, suppose you averaged 4,000 calories a day, but your goal to lose the amount of weight you want in the time you want is 2,500 calories a day:

4,000 - 2,500 = 1,500

You need to eat 1,500 fewer calories each day.

Can you do it? If it seems like it will be just too hard, increase the number of days you'll do it in until you come up with a daily calorie goal that is feasible. Once you have a calorie goal that feels realistic, let's figure out how you can reach it most, if not all, days.

Keep it flexible None of this is cast in stone. Remember, this is your first draft, subject to revision. And even after you have solidified your plan, you should allow yourself to make changes. If you are too rigid, you will regard a lapse or two as a total failure. That may lead you to give up entirely.

Set a short-term daily calorie goal and promise yourself to reassess it after 30 or 60 or 90 days.

You may want to slow the pace of your weight-loss or set a less ambitious long-goal. In all likelihood, though, once you start eating and exercising more sensibly and especially once you start losing weight with the help of phen375 - you will be in a different frame of mind. What seemed simply too challenging on day one may seem effortless on day 45.

Make some menus

When I was feeding a family of five, my biggest challenge was coming up and taste-tempting ideas day after day. Every once in a while I'd sit down with the family and ask them what they liked best to eat.

We'd make a list of main meals, vegetables and other side dishes, desserts, and snacks. We'd post the list on the bulletin board and whenever ideas were in short supply, I'd pick one from column A and one from column B, etc. We made sure to include choices that ranged from quick and easy to major undertakings, economical to extravagant, and ingredients that were available in various seasons.

Do something similar for yourself, but instead of consulting your family, consult your calorie counter. Write down foods and food combinations you like.

1. Emphasize low-calorie, low-fat choices.
2. Think about lower-fat cooking methods, like steaming, boiling, poaching, rack grilling, and microwaving instead of frying, sauteing, and drowning food in sauces and gravies.
3. Use lower-fat alternatives.
4. Include snacks in your list, but make them low-cal.

Make a list of your personal food heroes and villains.

Food heroes are low- calorie, high-bulk foods in each of the food groups that you find delicious, tempting, satisfying and easy to get your hands on. The villains are calorie-dense foods you can't stop eating once you start. Be Sure your list includes lots of heroes. And banish as many of the villains as you think you can.

Having detailed menus is good insurance against freelance bingeing. If you know what you're supposed to eat at any given meal, you can purchase the ingredients and prepare the right number and size of portions. Simply opening the refrigerator when you are hungry can be as dangerous as walking into a lion's den!

Plan a day Start out by planning a single day's eating. How many meals will you eat? The standard, answer is three, but does that reflect your reality? Remember: Snacks are meals. Does the evidence in your food diary say you eat five or six or even more times each day? Can you cut out one or two of them?

Maybe more frequent, but smaller, meals is a good idea for you. If you often get hun, between meals, plan for that. It does not matter how often you eat as long as the total daily calories are within your goal. There is even some evidence that eating more often will help you lose weight, since revving up your digestion burns calories in the process.

Do not skip breakfast. This is a tempting strategy, but not a good one.

If you're like most people, breakfast is 8 or more hours after the last time you ate. Your body needs some fuel to get you started on your day It doesn't have to be a huge meal, but it should feature some carbohydrates and something to drink, at the very least.

Begin a new food diary page, but instead of writing what you ate, write in what you plan to eat. Put in the time, the number of is servings and the calories. And then add up the calories. If the total is too high decrease the servings or substitute another food. It's a good idea to Use a pencil for this exercise, since you'll probably have to be a lot of revising.

Write it all down

The best strategy for sticking to a plan is to keep a record. This may seem cumbersome and time consuming and i'll be the first to admit that it is.

Your food and exercise diaries will be the most valuable tools in your weight-loss effort.

1. Help you see the truth in black-and-white
2. Keep you honest, in case you "forget" something you ate or embellish something you did
3. Motivate you
4. Help you focus on where your problems lie.
5. Help you recognize triggers and unhealthy behavior patterns.
6. Help you analyze the effectiveness of your plan
7. Try it for a while. Before long your new healthy habits will become ingrained.
8. On the evening of the first day, after you've eaten your last bite, plan your eating and exercise for the rest of the week.

A double-entry ledger

For the first week at least, your food and exercise diary should be like a double entry ledger.

If you possibly can, carry your food and activity diary pages with you. If this is not practical, use index cards and transfer the information into your weight-loss notebook at the end of the day.

Write down everything that goes into mouth and everything you do that qualifies as activity beyond what you usually do each day.

Always keep track of your calorie intake. Use your calorie counter, or check one of the online counters. Don't cheat! Remember to count calories according to serving size. An overstuffed ham sandwich is not a serving; neither is a half carton of ice cream, nor an entire bunch of grapes. If you eat out, take advantage of the many calorie counters that list items sold at national chains. Keep track of how much water you're drinking and pour some more if you're not logging your daily minimum.

According to the medical experts, you can figure out how much water you need by dividing your weight in half to get the approximate number of fluid ounces you should drink.

So, if you weigh 140 pounds, that's 70 fluid ounces, or about 9 cups of water. Drink up!

Don't get discouraged if you fail to live up to your own expectations. Remember, this is a first draft. Learn from the differences between the two columns, and make notes in the comments column about what was going on. For example:

1. Did you wait until you were too hungry to eat sensibly?
2. Were you away from home or in a setting where food choice was limited?
3. Was there something stressful or otherwise triggering that caused you to violate your own rules?
4. Were you tempted by unsupportive companion?
5. Did you miss a planned exercise session because you were too busy or out town? e weather sabotage your planned activity?
6. Were you less active than usual because you were feeling ill?
7. Did the weather sabotage your planned activity?
8. Did you feel too sore because your previous exercise was too strenuous?

Think of the first week os your diet as a tryout.

If you lose some weight, that's great, but the main idea is to see how well you can live with what you've outlined for yourself.

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