General Diet

As I said in the last post, in order to lose weight, a diet change is much more important than exercise. Your body is very efficient at using the calories you take in. You burn a certain number of calories every day just staying alive, without any activity, and this is your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR). There is a calculator that might be a little high but it's a good starting point BMR Calculator. Beyond this rate you have to work out very hard for a good amount of time to make a big dent in your caloric balance. A good way to see a estimation of the amount of calories that you burn in certain activities you can go here: Activity List. If you look through that list you will see that burning calories in addition to your BMR can be tough.

My Current Diet
That being said, changing your habits when it comes to eating can be very effective. The current diet that I am on is pretty strict, it is based on the one outlined by Timothy Ferris in his book The Four-Hour Body; a outline of the diet can be found on his blog here: Four-Hour Body Diet.

The basis of the diet is that you follow it strictly for 6 days of the week and have one day per week in which you can eat whatever you would like. Here are the basic  rules of the non-binge days:

• No carbs except for legumes (pinto beans, lentils, etc.) while limiting fatty legumes such as peanuts
• Eat low-fat proteins such as: chicken breast and thighs, white-meat turkey, certain cuts of beef and pork
• Eat as many healthy vegetables as you would like: spinach, broccoli, asparagus, peas, etc.
• He suggests finding what you like and eat those same meals over and over again
• Don't drink calories (although it does allow for up to 2 glasses of dry red wine per day)
• He also says take the above-mentioned one day off per week in order to keep your metabolic rate high and to increase the ability to remain on the diet

I have found foods one here that I enjoy and it is going well so far. I eat four small meals a day and stay satisfied, trying to always keep my caloric intake at or below 2000 per day. The main things that I struggle with is staying away from peanuts and other nuts as a snack food and trying not to drink beer during the week.

I have been on the diet for about 3 weeks now and have seen up to 5 lbs. loss (it's tough for me to gauge true loss because my water levels vary so much in a days time). I consider this a success because, since I had already lost so much weight, it is more difficult for me to lose more.

My Diet for the Majority of My Weight Loss
If you are not ready to commit to the Four Hour Body, which for me is probably the most extreme type of diet I could see myself doing long-term, you can certainly follow some of the tactics that I used previously. It was basically a less-committed version of the diet I am on now. Here are some tools:

• Portion control- I know that this is kind of a buzz word but it works. If you are eating at home, don't eat out of the dish that has the entire meal. Put it into a dish of portion that you think will satisfy you; if you are still hungry after the plate, go get more (Do not try to starve yourself, it will not work), at least you will have to go through the motions of seeing the additional servings. If you are at a restaurant, eat slowly and don't be embarrassed to take home leftovers.
• Eat low-fat, lower-calorie proteins- See above. Chicken breast, beans, etc. are filling and do not add too many calories.
• Try to eliminate white carbs- No white rice, white bread, white pasta, or potatoes. You can find whole-wheat and brown alternatives to most of these.
• Try to eat multiple vegetarian meals per week- One thing that was very effective for me was eating a salad for lunch almost every day I went to work. This was a healthy salad, not some excuse for cheese, croutons, and dressing, and I could eat over a pound of food with less than 500 calories and feel satisfied.
• Get in a habit of checking nutrition labels- Know what you are putting into yourself, after awhile it will become second-nature and you can pretty much know or guess the values of anything that you will eat.
• Don't get too down on yourself if you slip up- I never really had too much trouble with this but apparently a major problem with many dieters is that if they venture outside of their diet once or twice they scrap the entire thing. Just know that long term, every little bit helps and it really is a cumulative effect.

You can take anything that I have described above and use for your personal diet change. You can also apply it as much or as little as you would like. Obviously the more strictly you can follow a diet, the more results you will see, but I would suggest having a plan you feel like you can follow. As soon as you revert to your former habits full-time, any gains you will have made will evaporate.

So that's the basic diet; as long as you plan well, everything here can be easy to implement. I will give more specifics and personal examples in future posts but for now good luck!