With each child, I tacked on an extra five pounds, mostly in my flabby, paunchy gut. For those keeping track, that's a total of 10 pounds on top of the extra 10-15 I've always carried around just for kicks.
I've never been good about losing weight. It's not so much a matter of not exercising enough. I'm the kind of person who will walk up the five flights to my office, walk to the market instead of drive, hit the elliptical, take aerobics classes, etc.
For me, it's all about the food. And I tried everything: low-carb, low-fat, eating foods in a certain order, cutting out wheat, cutting out dairy. Nothing worked. I eventually conceded I don't have the willpower to restrict my diet for the long haul. Then a friend told me about Lose It!, a free app for the iPhone. (Yes, I said it's free, in case you missed that just now.) Lose It! is basically a calorie counter in which you enter your starting weight, your goal weight, and the desired rate of weight loss. It then calculates a daily calorie budget for you, and you keep track of what you eat and how much you exercise.
That's it. It's really simple. I've used it for almost three weeks, and I've lost four pounds so far. And for the first time, I'm actually believing that maybe I can lose all my extra blubber.
Now, the calorie counts are not all accurate. Nor are the burn rates for various exercises. But if you do a little googling, it's easy enough to put in the correct numbers. Why I think it's effective, at least for me, is that it requires me to think about what I eat. And I'm realizing how many empty calories I used to consume. Stuff I wouldn't even remember eating afterwards. The cookie someone left in the breakroom after a meeting? 350 calories. And it wasn't all that good, and that's as many calories as a whole serving of stir-fry at dinner. Dayum!
That's not to say I feel deprived. Looking through my log, I've had stuff like strawberry-rhubarb pie a la mode, double chocolate cookies, green curry chicken, grilled steak fajitas. That's good eating right there. Admittedly, the fat content of my diet isn't anything to be proud of, but the calorie count is doing OK. And if I can make it through the daunting holidays, I will hit my goal weight (which is a nutritionist-recommended weight of 151 pounds, in case you care) by my birthday.
In a nutshell, if you are trying to lose weight, the solution is simple: eat less than you burn. And if you, like me, have trouble knowing how you're doing on that eating:burning ratio, get the Lose It! app for your iPhone. It's easy to use, it's free, and it works. Did I also mention that it's free?
