Ryan's Guide to Weight Loss - Step 1

I have decided to layout my opinion on the best way to change to a "thinner" lifestyle. This is 100% purely my personal opinion on the steps "I" would recommend to a friend trying to lose weight. This is in no way even remotely to be considered a professional guide. 

I personally believe that changing my lifestyle was a far greater goal than just losing the weight. I have seen many friends yo-yo with different diets because they drop a bunch of weight doing something that would be impossible to realistically maintain. So my goal was to completely change my lifestyle to habits and activities that would just naturally lead to being thinner. A lot of that had to do with just understanding what I was doing wrong. 

So, what follows is my own little step by step guide to changing to a "thinner" lifestyle. While it is also certainly "healthier" I am neither a doctor or a nutritionist so I am not going to pretend to be an expert on health. I also don't pretend to know what is best for everyone. However, lots and lots of friends, family and co-workers have asked how I lost weight, or what I would recommend they do to lose weight. And this is it:

STEP 1

The very first thing you should do if you want to start losing weight is get a firm understanding of what exactly you are eating. I am convinced ignorance is the biggest contributor to being overweight, with lazy a step behind. So, all you need to do is track your food for a week. Don’t worry about starting a diet or exercising for the time being (unless you really want to of course). The key is to understand exactly what your current eating habits are and see firsthand exactly how it is making you fat.

So, how do you track it? I know, it sounds like a massive pain in the ass but I think you will be pleasantly surprised how easy it really is. The answer is The Daily Plate. It is linked on the right side of our blog for a reason. It worked wonders for all 3 of us. I have to pause to give big props to Jeff on this one because he got me into it, and I got Dave into it. So click on the link (or find a different calorie counter if you like, there’s many) and go register and then come right back. Don’t worry; it is 100% free for everything you need. Go ahead, I’ll wait…

Still waiting... take your time...

Ok, all signed up? Great! You should be looking at a page with several tabs across the top. The ones you need to worry about right now are “My Plate” and “My Calorie Goals”. Click on “My Calorie Goals” and fill it in (and be honest with yourself!). This is a picture of what mine looks like right now. To start with, just select maintain. This will give you a “rough” estimate of how many calories your body needs a day to maintain your current weight.

Now, let’s click on “My Plate” and start adding! Think about what you had for breakfast this morning. In my case I had a bowl of a new cereal I am trying with some banana and blue berries in it. So I search for “heirloom grains” because I remember it was called something like that. Sure enough it popped up 4 different entries for that cereal. So I added a serving of that to my plate for today. I also then searched for bananas, blue berries and fat free milk. Be sure to be honest with yourself about the serving size you had ;).

So take a look at what you ate and look at the calories and break downs for Carbs/Fats/Proteins. I’m not even going to attempt to tell you what the right percentages are for each group because the last thing I want to start is a carb war. But I myself just tried to keep my carbs around 40% and fat and protein each around 30%. I DO believe the standard American diet has entirely too many carbs and I think you might be surprised what that percentage is for you at the start. However, this is NOT any kind of low carb plan.

OK. So now you have the tools needed to track your food. Do it for a week. Be 100% honest and track EVERYTHING every day. You can stop here and come back in a week, or earlier if you decide you want to jump start and go to Ryan’s Guide to Weight Loss Step 2.