Sunday, October 4, 2009

Diet Lose Weight


Diet Lose Weight
For some time now, various people have been asking me to document what I did to lose roughly 50 pounds last year. I've been planning to get around to writing it up it sooner or later, but later just never came.
Enough of that procrastination! Today is my 32nd birthday and roughly one year ago today, I wrote the following a few days after my 31st:
Every January people make New Year's Resolutions that they end up breaking. It was with that in mind that I spent a month trying to figure out what I wanted to do. Around that time I ran across both The Hacker's Diet and Jeff Sandquist's tale of weight loss and finally convinced myself to take it seriously.
I set a goal for myself to drop 30 pounds by my birthday.
Of course, I also promised that I'd write it up back then too.
I intend to write up the process in a bit more detail in the coming weeks. Several people have asked me how I do it and what the spreadsheet looks like. I'm happy to share it as soon as I clean it up a bit.
Heh.
Well, consider this my attempt to finally deliver on that promise. This week I'll publish a series of short articles that explain the simple plan and the various tactics I used to drop nearly 50 pounds (or 5 belt inches and one shirt size) in the course of last year.
The advice I'll give isn't likely to be all that different that what you might read elsewhere, but the combination is what worked well for me. Hopefully it'll motivate a few more people to do the same. I learned a lot about my habits and behavior in the process and suspect that much of it applies to most people who are struggling with extra pounds.
What You Need To Know
Before getting into specifics, there are a few things worth mentioning about the plan I'll present:
* Small changes have a major impact on weight loss because they're compounded over time. It's just like saving for retirement. The sooner you start doing just a little bit every day, the better off you'll be.
* Anyone can do this. Anyone.
* The process is self-reinforcing once you start to see real results. That means you need to commit to a month--a very difficult month. After that first month, though, it's easy. And the more weight you have to lose, the easier it is.
* During that first month, you'll be developing three new habits. Only one of them is likely to conflict with an existing habit. The other two will consume maybe 5 minutes of your daily routine.
If you're seriously thinking about trying to lose weight, give it a shot. This is one of the easiest non-fad and non-gimmick plans you'll run across, mostly because the "plan" is very simple and tangible. It's not quite "the simplest thing that could possibly work" but it sure comes close.

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