It is a lifestyle change

msujack

One Month Observations from a 5’11” male with a starting weight of 247, goal of 205 (for starters), and a current weight of 240.

Tracking what you eat isn’t always convenient and exact. Having eaten out at local restaurants more than a couple times in the past 30 days has shown that tracking calories in isn’t exactly “simple”. Looking up nutritional information for items that aren’t from the grocery store or a chain restaurant is guess work. My advice is to guess high and be honest with yourself as to how much you have eaten. Under reporting calories to keep your number under the goal isn’t doing anything besides hurting your goal. Weigh what you can with a digital food scale. It helps.

Tracking calories burned is not simple either. I have been using a Fitbit Charge linked up to MFP for a month and it guesstimates my TDEE based upon steps taken, my input stats, and exercise intensity. It’s a ballpark, but definitely not perfect. The Fitbit does help me walk around more and keep me from being sedentary on lazy days. Worth it in my situation, but might not be for you.

Weight loss isn’t linear. If you weigh yourself every day, you will gain fast and lose fast at times. It’s the average that you need to be concerned with. If you don’t like to see things go up, weigh less often. It can be frustrating to lose a few pounds over a week and then see it come storming back one day. It is just water weight fluctuations. Everyone has them.

You cannot safely drop 438lbs in 3 weeks for an event. It took time to put on the fat; it takes time (and effort) to take it off. Setting unrealistic expectations will more than likely result in buying a bigger pair of pants (you will fail). Goals are good, they should be difficult to reach, but not impossible.

There are no “bad” foods. Just track everything and adjust your diet to fit into your goal of losing weight. If you are over-eating, you will see that changing a few things in your diet will help your situation at that moment. If you don’t know what I am saying, go eat and log a couple donuts one morning, then realize what you will need to do to make up for that later in the day to avoid blowing up your calorie goal. You will at one point blow up your calorie goal. It’s not the end of the world. You didn’t die when you did it all the time. You may gain weight if you constantly over eat, but you aren’t reading this because that is what you plan to do. (Note: donuts are fine to eat, but they pack a caloric punch to your daily allotment without exercise)

Body wraps, detoxes, X-whatever day fixes, etc… They don’t work. Period. Stop asking if the newest one REALLY does something it claims to. It is purely marketing a product/”system” to fatten someone’s wallet by lightening yours. It’s not profitable for a company to tell you to eat less calories than you burn (buy less of our magic potion!). They didn't invent an "anti-calorie" or create a product that can spot reduce fat. At best you eat their system which is magically under your calorie goal and combined with exercise you lose weight (throw me money for groceries and an additional 50% and I can do that for you too!). At worst, you lose water weight and think that you can magically shed pounds by wrapping yourself in a saran-wrap covered ace bandage (I can make those for you much cheaper if you are looking for a black market wrap, haha). These product. DO. NOT. WORK. C.I.C.O. does, and the program is free.

Search the posts for a topic you are looking for answers to. I don’t post daily. I look for information/support/recipes/success stories on previously posted articles.