I've Got Pounds In The Wrong Places

I sympathize with everyone who is attempting to get into better health and loose weight but just can't seem to loose the weight where they want to.

Anyone who wants to loose weight seems to want to loose it from their hips, thighs, tummy, arms or some other specific area first because it bothers them the most. That person then goes all out to target that one area and all they end up doing is possibly making it look bigger because they are just building up muscle under the fat that's there.

The hard to face truth of it all is that your body's genetics are going to decide for you where and how it's going to loose the fat. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news but what ever you do don't focus on this. Don't attempt to fight your body on where to loose those pesky pounds. Just know that you don't need to target one area of your body and work it till your blue in the face.

So again I'd say to you please don't focus on the number of pounds being lost but simply focus on maintaining a healthy lifestyle since that what is important in the end and most likely will give you the results you want as well.

Consistency Is Key

Your body wants to stay around one consistent weight. It's when we make a change in our habits that is consistent that forces our body to change be it by gaining or losing weight.

Since consistency is key try to make small changes because for most people too big of a change is a lot of work which they don't have time for. Small changes do add up to a big lifestyle change though. It's just a matter of finding the small changes that are manageable or even easy to fit into your life. Just remember it's not about putting your life on hold to loose weight. It's about loosing weight by the way you live your life.

Food Substitution

When trying to limit the intake of calories obviously eating lots of fruits and vegetables helps a lot. I'll be honest with you on this one, I only like about 4 different vegetables which makes it tough. My advice on this is to slowly start substituting lower calorie items in.

A good example is to try buying low fat sour cream instead of regular. With sour cream I never notice a difference in taste. Although some foods just taste terrible if you buy low fat or fat free, like ranch dressing, in which I just stick to the regular kind.

Also try to substitute juices instead of pop which I know is really hard to stop the addiction to pop. Pop is a terribly addictive drink and doesn't provide any nutritional value to you. Juice will also contain a lot of sugar and other unnecessary things in it but it's about substituting things slowly so that you don't fall off the wagon when your urges for the unhealthy foods returns.

To start getting some fruits and vegetables in your diet if you don't already is to just take one item you were planning to eat today and substitute it with a piece of fruit or vegetable. Let's say you planned on having a sandwich and chips at lunch and instead you substitute a banana for the chips. Just 1 oz of Lay's Classic Potato chips has 152 calories while 1 oz of banana has only 25 calories. Both of these foods were looked up on the Calorie King website.

Give this a try for at least a week and see how you do. Try to continue this each week and always be on the lookout for other easy item to substitute in.

Back To Basics

Anyone who says that you can't use a math equation and figure out how to loose weight is trying to sell you something. I'll describe a math equation that you can use to calculate how many calories you can eat each day and loose one pound per week.

Step 1: Calculate the number of calories your body needs to maintain it's current weight.
You can use the Calorie Calculator located here at the Mayo Clinic website. Fill in your age, height, weight and gender then click Next. Now you need to choose your activity level. For this I always choose Inactive because then we can calculate our workouts ourselves. Click Submit when you've chosen your activity level. We'll use my results as an example. The total number of calories my body burns each day without exercise is 1,850. So if I eat 1,850 calories each day and do no exercise I'll maintain my current weight.

Step 2: Reduce calories for weight loss
A deficiency of 3,500 calories is equal to 1 pound of weight loss. With this in mind if I decided to eat only 1,350 calories each day and still did not exercise I should loose one pound of weight every 7 days or so. Because I took in 500 calories less than what my body required I begin to loose weight....simple.

With all this in mind imagine that I took in only 1350 calories each day and also exercised 3 times a week for 30 minutes each time using a treadmill going 5 mph. For my weight I should be burning 290 calories or somewhere around that. That means each week I create a deficit of 3,370 calories which means I should loose about .96 pounds per week or 3.85 pounds per 4 weeks.

Counting calories is not for everyone but I've proven it to work. I lost 20 pounds in 2 months by tracking my calories from eating and the calories burned by the exercise that I did. This helped me to understand how much I should be eating. I learned to limit the junk food because the junk food was high in calories which meant that couldn't eat much of it before reaching my daily limit of calories. Then I would be left starving for the rest of the day. What did help is that I could eat anything I wanted but I couldn't go over my calorie limit.

A great website for finding out how many calories are in many different kinds of food visit www.CalorieKing.com. They also have software to help track your calories as well which is what I used.

Hello Everyone

I'm writing this blog for the benefit of helping myself and others finding ways to fit in having a healthy lifestyle without having to fore go living our lives. Too many times have I seen articles which assume that our resources and time are unlimited. Currently in my life I have a goal to slim down back to my body shape before I had a child. I firmly believe I can do this without the help of pills, patches or personal trainers. My goals are not to achieve a certain body weight but to have a healthy looking and feeling body. With this in mind I have decided not to weigh myself at all but to let my lifestyle shape my body.


I am a computer programmer so the advice given on this is strictly my own personal opinions. I highly suggest talking to a doctor before starting your own plan.