My Big Diet Secret!

I should preface this post with a few things.  I am not a nutrionist or anything like that.  I am not qualified to tell anyone how to eat, these are just my experiences.  Also I believe that every person and every body is unique, so the idea that one specific way to lose weight would work for everyone is completely wrong. You have to find what works for you.

I have had several people ask me how I am losing weight, so I am going to break it up into a couple posts.   One about eating and one about exercise.  So here goes the eating one.
I knew going into this that there were certain things I had to accomodate when it came to any type of "diet".
1. We don't have extra money to pay for a program.  So anything where I had to pay, was out.
2. I have to be able to eat, because I love to eat.  And I hate having someone tell me what to eat.  A meal plan would never work for me.
3. I need to be able to accomodate my family's likes and dislikes, and I am not about to make 2 different dinners a night just because I am trying to lose weight.
4. This is the biggest one and the reason I believe this time I am actually succeeding.  I wanted this to be a permanent lifestyle change.  I have tried to lose weight before, like most people, and I have failed for one reason or another.  This time I was determined would be different.  So I have never considered myself on a diet, rather just changing my whole eating lifestyle.
So I searched the Internet for how to lose weight, different diets that may work, and I came to one conclusion, one thing that every diet has in common, or at least most.  The big secret to weight loss...eat less, excercise more.  That's it. Plain and simple.  You've heard it before, and it is the truth.  There really is no magic drug that will work.  If you want to try those pills that magically help you lose weight, go ahead, you will probably be on the toilet for a few hours and gain the weight back within a week.
I decided I would have a go at it on my own for the most part.  I knew I had to make big changes, and much of that would be changes in what I ate to start with.  Or rather how much I ate.   So the first thing I did was find a calorie counter app that I liked. (I had just gotten my first iPhone too, so that helped, if you don't have a smartphone there are plenty of websites that do the same thing.) So I chose the MyFitness Pal app (it's free, and they have a website myfitnesspal.com)I tried a few before I found that I like this one best.  In my experience it has the best database for foods you want to input.  When you get started you can input your current weight, your activity level, your goal weight, and then you can choose what you are trying to do.  If you want to gain, maintain, or lose weight.  And it will allow you to choose between 1/2 and 2 lbs per week that you want to loose.  I decided I would start with the 1lb a week weight loss.  The app then tells you how many calories you can eat per day and lose weight.  Of course it is in theory, there are other things that can effect your weight loss, so a visit to your doctor is helpful to make sure everything is good.
When I saw at my current weight how many calories I could a day and still lose weight I was shocked.  And this was without any exercise.  So I decided to start. I discovered after a few days that I still had 500 calories left at the end of the day sometimes, so I changed to the 2lbs a week weight loss and was still doing well with my calorie in take.  You can also input your exercise in on the app and that will give you more calories a day that you can eat.
It is not a lot of work to put int the food, but you do have to put in everything you eat.  I started looking at theserving size of the foods that I ate and was surprised to see how little of some foods I could have, but also some foods I could actually have quite a bit of.  I soon discovered that actually counting out chips and measuring out cereal and at least trying to guess how much of a food you are eating can really help control what you eat.  I no longer eat chips or crackers from a bag or box, i count them out into a bowl and I can have what is in the bowl.  This was big for me because I realized that I am a quantity eater.  Well I used to be.  I wanted to be able to eat a lot of food.  That made me realize that I could eat a lot more carrots for less calories than chips.  So that's what I started doing.  More fruits and vegetables became the natural thing for me to do because I could eat thos without putting tons of extra calories in my counter.  I found low calorie salad dressings, low calorie lasagna, all kinds of food that I really enjoy that didn't have to be high in calorie and still taste great.
So now that I have rambled on quite a bit, I will stop for today.  My next post will include more of what food we actually eat now and more specifially the things i have changed.