I’m trying to start slow and consistently lose 1-2 pounds a week. Typically when I try to lose weight, I get all fired up and work really hard for a week or so until I burn out. A fast pace just isn’t sustainable for me. I’m doing much better with the slow and steady approach so far.

You can lose weight with simple math. Losing weight isn’t easy, but the concept is. You need to burn about 3,500 calories to lose a pound of body weight. You can use a site like www.calorie-count.com to get an estimate of the calories you burn each day just by being you and being alive. My number is 2,900. Somewhat arbitrarily, before I even looked up that number, I had decided to limit myself to 2,000 calories per day. That will net me about 900 calories per day, which should translate into 1 - 2 pounds lost per week. So far, with the exception of one bad week, that is exactly the pace I have been on.

The first two weeks of cutting my calories were difficult at times. There were days when I felt rather hungry, but I resisted the desire to eat as I knew I had already had my daily allotment of calories. I think surviving the early temptation is the key to success. Now I can get through a 2,000 calorie day and feel just fine, sometimes coming in even a couple of hundred calories lower and not feeling like I’m missing out in any way.

For me, this process is very similar to setting up a budget and controlling my spending. You really have to track the details, at least for a while, to understand where you actually are and what you must do to achieve results. I thought I was eating a lot less than I really was. I suggest spending some time tracking what you eat for about a week so you can determine a baseline, and then start looking for opportunities to cut calories. For example, I found that my coffee habit was costing my a lot of empty calories from the flavored creamer I was using- easily 200 or more per day. I would never have realized that without taking the time to figure out my actual calorie consumption.

Limiting calories is the first step to success, but finding ways to burn calories will speed up the process (and I think it’s safe to say that exercise is good for you anyway). Again, I am going for slow and steady and small changes that I will be able to maintain. I decided to make walking my primary source of exercise for now. You don’t need special equipment for walking and you can basically do it any time and any place. I’m fortunate to already have a treadmill at home so I use that in the mornings. For now, I’m doing 20 minutes at 2.5 miles per hour. Not a stressful pace by any means and not so long that I get bored. From what I can tell, that burns about 70 calories. My next small step is to park farther away from my office at work. That may not sound like much, but it is .21 miles each way and that adds up to an extra 2 miles per week and about 200 extra calories burned. I wanted to do more at work, so using Google Maps Pedometer, I mapped out a short route around my office, about .55 miles and walk that once or twice a day depending on the weather and my workload. That short walk is worth about 45 calories.

I plan to add a weight lifting to routine soon, but I don’t want to rush into that. For now, I have taken to doing yard work as my other primary form of exercise. There is a lot to be done right now and I actually don’t mind doing the work at all because it’s benefiting our home and my waistline at the same time. One hour of pulling weeds is good for about 300 calories.

I suggest tracking the exercise you do along with the calories you consume. I actually found that I have been able to predict my weight loss by looking at the numbers I record. That is a pretty cool feeling and it really makes me feel like I am in control again. I use FitDay to track my numbers. There is a free online version and a paid version that you can download. I’ve only used the free online version so far and it works just fine. Though be warned, it does seem to overstate your base calories burned so you’ll have to look elsewhere for that number.

Setting my weight goals- you can see my weight loss goals on this site in my ‘fat snowball’ (silly name borrowed from the debt snowball term). I am looking at the slow and steady approach here for sure, but seeing that this slow pace should help me reach my goals in only one year is very encouraging. Another year of being fat doesn’t sound like fun, but I sure wish I had taken these actions a year ago and I don’t want to let any more time go by. I set three goals. The first being just a nice round number, not too far from where I started. Sort of a ‘getting started’ goal. It’s a lot easier to take on small chunks of the total than the whole thing. Then I just projected the remaining two goals out from there at a reasonable pace. I know I will reach a point where the weight will be harder to lose, but I also know that I will reach a point of greater activity and stronger commitment so I think I can make it happen.

I’ve had success with weight loss before, losing 50 pounds about five years ago. I kept it off for a while, but I finally got lazy again and let it all come back and more. My approach at that time was to simply overpower my weight by exercising so much that I hardly paid attention to my diet. These days, I don’t have the time for extreme exercise, nor do I have the desire. I’m getting older now and I’m happy to take the turtle’s pace to reach my goals now. I hope I can do it and I hope this plan can be helpful to someone else out there. All of my progress will be updated on this site!