Diets (ZOMG!)

[tylorva]

For various reasons that I won't go into here, I feel the urge to lose a load of weight before October.  So for the first time in my life I am contemplating some kind of diet.  However, I am clueless on such things

Comments

[w00hoo]

This isn't quite what you asked for, but being the internet that means it doesn't matter :-)

What has always worked for me is discipline in counting the calories of what I eat, making sure I exercise regularly and weighing myself to see the difference.

I know that sounds a bit basic, but there it is.

It's really easy to 'just eat that' when you aren't thinking about the 'value' of what you are eating, it's really easy to miss a few days exercise (that becomes more than a few) when you aren't watching it closely and without a marker at the end of it it's tough to see if all the effort is worth it. In all cases where I've ended up putting on weight again it is when something has disrupted that pattern of
'watch what I eat'
'exercise regularly'
'weigh myself once a week and record it'.

To kind of formalise it, decide how much you want to eat a day, from memory around 1500 calories is a good figure but it could be more could be a bit less, I don't keep track if dieting trends. A surf of the web should bring up a huge range of figures to allow a guesstimate. Get a set of scales so that you can measure stuff like cereal (30g of cereal is hardly anything...) etc. Get in to the habit of watching the numbers on the sides of packets. I tended to buy a book of 'values' although it's probably all on the net now. You can get figures for take-aways etc. to help factor those in. Eat what you want, but to that value.

Think about what exercise you enjoy and can do regularly. If it needs to be cheap and cheerful then walking works, swimming can be good but a bit of a faff, gyms more so and really expensive. Consider an exercise bike or similar if you have room for it at home (they can be picked up cheap, people are always giving up on them) it's a lot harder to make excuses against exercising when the kit is right in front of you. If you go for a gym then be realistic about what you are going to do and if you find you aren't doing it then cancel the membership, otherwise you soon find yourself paying loads for something you 'might use again soon' and it would have been cheaper to take the joining fee hit again. Decide how often you are going to exercise, if it's more strenuous than walking then every other day works well and try and stick to that but be willing to pro-rata it up to 3/4 times per week for when you have to miss a day (so they don't mount up.)

Get a set of scales, you can care about fat percentage and BMI etc if you want but it'll be sufficient just to have a set that say 'you're this heavy'. Pick a time of the week that you weigh yourself, do it every week and keep a record. It won't always go down (and there's the whole muscle is heavier than fat thing etc.) but it will to start off with and it'll be a good indicator if things start to slip.

I've no idea what 14 to 12 really equates to, but I'd have thought it was comfortably do-able by late October if you stick to it.

Hope that helps a bit.

[jester_uk]

I've no idea what 14 to 12 really equates to

Approx 2 inches in circumference (alternatively, pick a different clothing manufacturer or different style by the same manufacturer; women's clothing sizes are almost but not quite random numbers these days)

I agree with almost everything else you've got there, except I would always say ignore BMI because it's way too simplistic a calculation and ignores things like tissue density and fat percentage, but that's a whole other rant :-)

[tylorva]

It does, but I;m really looking for some kind of strcutured programme because I am MUCH better at sticking to something like that than when left to my own devices.