Ryan's Guide to Weight Loss - Step 2

So, if you are following the steps you should now have a pretty good idea about your eating habits. If you are on this site it is likely that you found out you are consuming too many calories.  Don’t feel bad, most of America does. I am hoping that as you were tracking you were a little shocked by the amount of calories and fat in some of the food/drink you consumed. Luckily, now you know, and as GI Joe taught us, that’s half the battle. 

What’s next? Well, now you need to start cutting out the crap. Take a good hard look at your week of tracked food and look for the big calorie fails. This includes, but is not limited to:  

• Any regular soda
  
• Juices with lots of sugar
  
• Beer, wine, mixed drinks (I know, that sucks)
  
• Candy of most sorts
  
• Baked goods like muffins, cookies, pastries, cakes, bagels,  donuts, etc
  
• Fast food
  
• Lattes/Mochas/Cappuccinos with fatty milk and sugar
  

Heavy sauces and dressings, like BBQ, Mayo, Creamy anything (go ahead and look up creamy Caesar dressing on the daily plate)

There are obviously many more fail items out there, but these are some common ones that we as Americans tend to enjoy in large quantities.

So the next step, which is by far the hardest, is to give these up. Yes, you need to give them up, and give them up for the rest of your life. Now I am not talking about skipping desserts for the rest of your life or during the holidays or special events. These items just cannot be a regular part of your diet, period. When I say “give them up”, I mean that these items should be RARE occurrences on your daily plate log. If you look back over your week of tracking and see 2 or more of these items that is a big fat FAIL. If you see 2 or less then you are already ahead of the game.

To start with I would strongly encourage you to not have them at all until you are down a few pounds and have a feel for what it will be like. Once you start losing weight it will be a lot easier to get motivated. 

So, your next homework assignment is to cut all that crap out of your diet for a week. And keep tracking your food, all of it. Do your absolute best not to add in additional calories to make up for the fluff (desserts, sodas, etc). Then take a look at your calorie count. You will be surprised how much it has gone down. Congratulations you are officially on your way. Once this week is over you should have a real good idea of what you will be dealing with on the weight loss road ahead.