Category: No Nonsense Weight Loss

How to Get Started With Your Weight Loss Plan

So you’ve made a decision to lose weight. Good for you 🙂

But how do you get started? Figuring out how to make this all happen can be pretty intimidating, to say the very least. What foods do you eat? Which foods do you not eat? What should you do for exercises? And so on.

Well, I’ll be honest with you. When I first embarked on my weight loss adventure, I had no clue what I was going to do. I just knew I needed to do something!

So I started out with the most obvious thing that I felt was causing me to gain weight… late night snacks.

But before I get too deep into that, let me backtrack a bit, if you don’t mind. I want to let you know that for a little more than a year before I actually started to lose weight, I had been trying to get started with my weight loss efforts. Unfortunately, they weren’t really working.

I was able to stop gaining, but I could never quite get to where I was losing, so I was stuck at 200 lbs. I wasn’t obese, by any means, but I had rolls on my sides, on my back and on my belly. They were small rolls, mind you, but rolls nonetheless!

So I had managed to maintain my weight by making sure I was getting exercise fairly regularly. My wife and I had gotten into the habit of taking walks 5 or 6 times per week. We would walk roughly 3 miles each time at a brisk pace (mild power walk).

This was good for our heart and lungs, but like I said, it wasn’t enough to help me drop those unwanted pounds and those pesky rolls of fat.

So let’s get back to what I did to actually start losing those pounds.. late night snacks.

You see, I love snacks. I like to pick and grab a bite here and there. Worst of all, I had a tendency to reach for sweet snacks, like Dove chocolates, M&Ms, cookies, etc. Not good!

And at night, I would eat dinner and then have dessert. And of course I would always have something else later on, like cookies and milk, chocolate cake, peanut butter and jelly sandwich, etc.

And sometimes I’d have another snack right before I went to bed! That’s right.. a second evening snack. Sometimes it might be chips and salsa or even a half of a sandwich. Either way, I was taking in calories that would never get burned because I was going to bed immediately after eating them.

So as I thought about my dilemma, I decided that the night-time snacks would have to be the first to go. It was an obvious step, and I need to start somewhere. So one evening when my wife asked me what I wanted for a snack, I told her “nothing. I’m not having a snack because it’s after 8 PM”.

At first she looked at me kinda funny, but then she realized what I was doing and understood fully. From that night on, I made a decision not to eat anything after 8 PM. In fact, I also decided that I wouldn’t drink anything with calories after 8 PM, so no juice, no chocolate milk… nothing. ZERO calories after 8 PM.

And that’s how I got started! I know that might seem very simplistic, but that’s why I call this “No Nonsense Weight Loss”, because it’s simple and straight forward, with no gimmicks or hype.

So there you have a starting point for your weight loss efforts. Cut out those evening and late night snacks. It might be tough at first, but remember why you’re doing this… for your health.

Don’t get tricked into thinking that it doesn’t matter, because it does matter. YOU matter. And every little thing that you do to take better care of yourself matters and has a lasting effect on your life, your heart, your blood pressure, your cholesterol levels, your lungs, your longevity.

Keep it lean.

Curt

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Weight Loss Basics

159.5 lbs.Losing weight is something that becomes very confusing for way too many people.

Some people think that it has to be a very complicated process, involving gimmicks, expensive diet foods, expensive exercise equipment, gym memberships, personal trainers and even surgery!! This is far from the truth.

Sadly, marketing and hyped up sales pitches have duped people into believing that they need the latest gimmicks and fads to lose weight successfully. Additionally, people are always looking for the easiest way to lose weight, instead of the most healthy way.

When I made up my mind that I was going to lose weight, I also decided that I would do it with no fad diets, no diet programs such as Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, etc., no special foods, no gym memberships and no special, trendy, expensive equipment. It was going to be me, a cheap digital bathroom scale and my sneakers. Nothing else.

I started out flying by the seat of my pants, sorting out the details as I moved forward, learning as each day came and went. I was already exercising semi-regularly by taking power walks 4-6 times per week. So I knew that would help.

Knowing this, I had to figure out how to turn those walks into a healthier, lighter, more fit me. So I started out by looking at the basics and thinking about what it would take for me to shed the pounds. Here’s what I came up with, in its most basic form:

Your Weight = calories taken in vs. calories burned

That’s it. The foundation of weight gain and weight loss. Pretty simple when you think about it, isn’t it? So forget about the fads, the trends, the diet pills, the acai berry diets and all of the other “brand name” diets you see, hear about and read about. In the end, it all comes down to burning more calories than you take in if you want to lose weight.

So that doesn’t seem so earth-shattering, does it? That’s because it’s not. It’s just plain old common sense, which seems to have gotten shoved under a rock by salesmen and saleswomen in spandex, sporting six pack abs and a great spray tan.

So stay tuned for my next post where I’ll begin to break down exactly what I did to drop 50 lbs., going from 200 lbs. to my high school senior weight of 150 lbs., between May and December, without spending a single penny extra on anything, except new clothes to fit my new, trimmer, slimmer body 🙂

I’ll be sharing everything I did and everything I learned, passing it on to you so you can apply it to your weight loss adventure 🙂

Keep it lean.

Curt

p.s. If you enjoyed this blog post or know someone else who might enjoy it, or could benefit from it, please be sure to share it, using the buttons below. Thanks!