I was weak and checked my weight on Wednesday morning after four days of the new calorie limit, rather than waiting until Saturday. I was please to find a nice low number of 223 on the scale indicating that Saturday's measurement was probably a higher than normal fluctuation. I got on the scale on this Saturday and was greeted with a nice 222.5 lbs readout, officially putting me down 9 lbs since new years day. Excellent!
I know this rate of loss (9 lbs over 18 days) will not sustain itself but its nice to have some immediate tangible results to power me into the next phase where weight loss will be more gradual.
* * * * *
Being aware of calories and exercise makes me more aware of weight loss ads and programs on the internet and TV and while I've always been skeptical of these programs and products and websites, I get extra mad now as unscrupulous people prey on the hopes and fears of those less informed or looking for a magic bullet.
Look, its simple math: your body needs so many calories to operate per day and survive. Since we evolved in the past where times of food scarcity were often your body has a storage system such that if you eat more than what your body needs to survive this instant, it will store the extra calories as fat. If you eat fewer calories than what your body needs, it will burned stored fat to make up the difference.
There is no other way to weight loss. You can try and trick your body or trick yourself, but ultimately you need to eat less to lose weight. In fact, technically you could eat nothing but sugary junk food and still lose weight as long as you kept under the calorie needs of your body. You'd have other problems of course, but you'd lose weight.
Now exercise helps in that it makes your body require more calories in a day thus burning more fat in the process (unless you've been like me in the past and simply ate the gains away every time you exercised to appease the gluttony demon inside you).
To summarize: to lose weight, eat less and exercise more.
Next time maybe I'll dive into what kind of food is best to eat
Saturday Weight: 222.5 lbs
