Deliberate Weight Loss

Have you ever experienced weight loss, weight gain, weight loss, etc, or what is known as “yoyo” dieting?

Are your feet just aching from being overweight?  I certainly can understand!  I reflected and traced my overweight problems to:

• Emotional eating - If I have a bad day, I tend to reach for the starches, which would be okay if I ate in moderation.
• Not being deliberate – I would try to lose weight and then give up because it was taking too long.
• Cheating – I tried weighing myself before eating breakfast, etc.  I ended up cheating no one but myself.

Before I got married, I wanted to fit into that perfect wedding dress, so I signed up for Jenny Craig’s Weight Loss Plan.  This was probably the most valuable dieting program I graduated from because I learned all about watching my caloric intake, eating less but more often, and making sure that I ate from all food groups.

Happily, I followed the plan and fit into that perfect wedding dress!

What followed that happy day can only be blamed upon my carelessness in failing to follow the deliberate and thoughtful recording of caloric intake that had led to my success.  Slowly I gained back that weight and more.  Pregnancy weight came and went.  Then, as I slowly dropped all of my good dieting habits, the weight slowly crept up!

I finally made a thoughtful and deliberate decision to lose the weight.  The key difference from my other half-hearted weight loss attempts was that I made several decisions from the very start of my program:

• Discussed my plan with my doctors.  They were astonished at how fit I became!
• Do not cheat.  This was the most important decision I made.  If I forgot to weigh myself before breakfast, I would still weigh myself after breakfast and record the weight.
• Record every calorie.  I had tried to use diet apps before, but I found that it was too easy for me to become distracted in the app’s bells and whistles rather than weight loss.  Therefore, I would look up every new food for the calories in food calorie books, etc.
• Utilize calorie calculators to find out how much calories I needed to lose weight, but still be healthy.  I also used these calculators to figure out how to maintain my weight.
• Keep the final goal visible.
• Be deliberate by being flexible.  I knew I would be colder in the winter after losing so much weight, so I stopped dieting and instead maintained my weight until the following summer, when I wanted to lose the last few pounds.
• Drink 8 to 10 glasses of water every day.  Water makes you feel full!

I can't promise that my method will work for you.  I would recommend making a deliberate plan before starting and sticking to it!

Books About Calorie Counting