See Your Doctor

Absolutely, without question, the very first thing you should do is to speak with your doctor about how much exercise is right for you specifically before you begin on any fitness plan.

If you’re not used to exercise of any kind, a good starting point is a 10-minute walk each day. That’s enough to begin getting into the habit of setting aside time and it starts to get your body used to a little more regular movement.

Since the Federal Government of the United States recommends you exercise for a minimum of two-and-a-half hours per week in order to reap the health protective effects of exercise (against things such as diabetes, heart disease, some forms of cancer, etc.), you’ll need to work up (gradually) from there. Add one minute every day or every second day after your first week until you are walking 20 to 25 minutes at a time.

Slowly Increase

If You've Not Done Much Exercise, a Good Starting Point Is a 10-Minute Walk Each Day

If You've Not Done Much Exercise, a Good Starting Point Is a 10-Minute Walk Each Day

Since walking is something the body was designed to do, you don’t have to take a day off if you are comfortable with that schedule. If you want to take a day or two off each week, keep adding a minute until you are up to 25 to 30 minutes each day so you can reach that 2.5-hour minimum.

Once you are getting the recommended two-and-a-half hours per week, pick up the pace. Each week, try to walk a little farther than you were walking the week before, in the same amount of time.

If you have joint problems, it’s worth considering either a treadmill (which usually have a bit of ‘give’ so are less wearing on joints) or an exercise bike (which takes some of the direct load-bearing off your joints).

Up The Intensity

After a few weeks of working up to 20-30 minutes and of increasing the pace, you may then feel ready to move on to more intense cardiovascular workouts and perhaps try some other plans that you have read about or heard of. If you would prefer to continue walking, you can start adding intervals of higher intensity bursts into your workout.

Additionally, the U.S. federal guidelines recommend that adults do strength training two days out of each week. Personally, when I was working on getting into the groove of working out for the first (serious) time, I waited until I had been doing 25 minutes of cardio exercise each day for a couple of weeks before I began adding the weight training.

There are a number of reasons I think this is a sound idea (so long as you follow through with adding that strength training component and don’t just forget it – mark it on your calendar for 2-3 weeks from your start date to be sure).

First, if I overwhelmed myself with too many new activities, it would be harder for me to get into the habit. Second, as out-of-shape as I had been, my body needed some improvement on the cardiovascular front, which supports the muscles as well, before I could really begin to have the capacity to begin weight training in an effective way.

Finally, I think taking things in steps helped me summon more motivation. As I continued working upward toward a schedule that included both cardio and weight training, I had lowered expectations for results. I wasn’t constantly checking the effects the workout was having on my body or the scale because I didn’t feel it was in full swing yet and to measure it would have been unfair.

Measuring Progress

My progress was measured by whether I completed all my workouts that week and by how much closer I was getting to my goal of 30 minutes a day, as well as by how much farther I was able to walk than the week before in the same amount of time. Yet, the increased physical activity was indeed resulting in changes to my body so that, by the time it was time to add strength training, I was already starting to see physical changes from the extra calories I had been burning and I was noticing that I had better endurance during other everyday tasks.

It felt like I had results before I even got up to full speed and those results powered my motivation to continue, leading to even more results.

Even if you have never worked out beyond trying to fish the remote out from under the back of the couch, you can get started on an exercise plan that suits your current activity level. Don’t let yourself be intimidated by overzealous plans in magazines or anywhere else that would have you believe that you need to start with an intense regimen.

Start from where you are and soon you’ll find yourself in the middle of a complete fitness program, without shocking your system or your schedule.

When you are doing exercises from a standing position or sitting perpendicular to the floor (whether weight lifting, flexibility, or cardio), avoid looking down at the weights or at your feet. Looking down changes the alignment and takes your neck out of a safe position. The same can be said for looking up. If you are looking up at the ceiling or a television high on the gym wall, your head and neck will not be at the right angle. Look straight ahead and keep your neck muscles as loose as possible.

If you have to do work that requires your body be slightly bent over, pay close attention to the position your neck is in as you get into your starting position. Sit or stand tall, as though you were trying to touch the ceiling with your head, relax your neck and shoulders, and then bend into position while maintaining the angle of your head and neck. Remember to reposition your body when you increase the weight or at the beginning of each new exercise.

Crunches And Sit Ups Done Properly Will Help Prevent Neck Strain

Crunches And Sit Ups Done Properly Will Help Prevent Neck Strain

Weights that are too heavy will also increase the likelihood of straining your neck; and since it is unlikely that you will be able to keep proper form with weights that are too heavy, you will only slow down your progress in the long run. Start with light weights and work your way up slowly. If you find you are unable to keep proper form or focus on proper breathing during your exercise, or if you are clenching your jaw, the weight is too heavy. Additionally, you should take your time; avoid lifting weights in quick or jerky motions.

During abdominal work, don’t put your hands behind your head and pull as if you are trying to lift yourself up! Instead, ensure that your arms and neck remain relaxed and neutral. All the effort should be coming from the abdominal area and you should pay special attention to ensure that the neck muscles are relaxed and loose. Most trainers these days advocate eiher folding your arms across your chest or simply touching your fingertips on your temples as you perform abdominal exercises.

Neck strain is one of the most common causes of workout injuries. If you pay attention to the positioning of your neck and the weights you use, and if you educate yourself about proper motion and form, you can greatly decrease the likelihood of succumbing to this injury and causing yourself an unnecessary setback in your fitness plans.

Vary Cardio Workout Intensity

Change up your intensity throughout your workout week, and throughout each of your individual workouts, and you can tap into the different benefits of each of the different levels of exertion.

When you first start working through a cardio routine, working out at a moderate pace for thirty to sixty minutes, three to five times a week, helps you construct the foundation of good cardio fitness. To achieve the right level of intensity, workout just hard enough so that you can still hold a conversation with a little effort.

If you have just begun your cardio workout, you may want to stick to this for a few weeks while constructing this base on which to build further levels of intensity.

Add Interval Training to Crank Up the Fat Burning!

Spinning Classes Will Have Your Muscles Screaming For Mercy as the Fat is Blasted From Your Body

Spinning Classes Will Have Your Muscles Screaming For Mercy as the Fat is Blasted From Your Body

After a few weeks, it can be good to add some intervals to your training plan as they can challenge your body and revitalize your workout. Start your workout at your moderate pace for five to ten minutes. Then, alternate between that intensity (for about four minutes at a time) and an intensity that would make conversation require quite a bit of effort (for about two minutes at a time).

For the last five minutes of your workout, slow to a pace where you can carry on a conversation with almost no effort at all to allow your body to cool down. This type of workout allows you to burn extra calories and helps to get your cardiovascular system used to a higher level of intensity.

After a few weeks you will notice that it takes much more movement to get your body to a point where you are having trouble holding a conversation. Do this interval workout about twice a week and your continuous moderate pace workout two to three times a week.

An alternative to doing it on your own is to join a class such as a ‘Spinning’ class. Spinning is an exercise bike based workout, based around intervals, which will have your muscles screaming for mercy as the fat is blasted from your body!

Crank It Up With HIIT

If, after four to six weeks of intervals, you start to feel like you may be hitting a plateau again or you are beginning to feel that boredom and want to challenge yourself a little more, you can turn it up another notch. Swap one of your interval sessions for a High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) session.

As with the previous interval workout, begin at a moderate pace for five to ten minutes. Then, alternate between 30 seconds of high intensity training at a pace at which you could just barely still hold a conversation, and 90 seconds of your moderate pace.

Once again, cool down with a final five minutes of a moderate to low intensity. This level of intensity in shorter bursts will actually help your body begin to sustain higher intensity intervals over longer periods because you will be reducing the size of the rests you get between your bursts and, overall, you will be spending more time at a higher intensity throughout your workout.

Have you hit a plateau? Are you bored with your cardio workout? Don’t throw in the towel just yet. Vary your intensity and you can rev your cardio routine back up and break through that funk.

Okay so you’ve decided, again, that you are absolutely, definitely, without a doubt, going to begin your workout program tomorrow morning. If you are anything like me, you have said this to yourself on several (dozen) occasions, only to let days slip by without being able to tweak your routine enough to make it happen. Or you started with lots of enthusiasm on days 1 and 2, a little less on day 3, and by day 4 your old routine is starting to swallow up your workout time again.

Routines are like well worn paths on a dirt road; your car’s tires are nestled nicely inside and practically steer themselves. On some days it can feel like the effort it takes to wear a new set of tracks is more than you can summon. The good news is that the effort only needs to be applied for about 21 days before it begins to feel as comfortable as your old routine did. The bad news is that when you’ve yet to make it to day 6, day 21 feels like a very distant goal. The problem here: having an option.

When I went back to university, I learned that my college had begun recording and broadcasting a selection of courses over cable television. You could simply record your classes and watch them at your leisure, presenting yourself on campus for exams and to hand in assignments. I promptly signed up for as many of them as I could fit into my degree program. They were perfect; I could do the work whenever it was convenient and it didn’t interrupt my regular routine (which included full-time work). I would just fit them in and around what I already had scheduled and my life would be blissful and balanced.

Of course that was until midterm exams were a week and a half away and I had accumulated a hefty collection of videocassettes, containing over two thirds of the class material covered to this point (say nothing of the readings I had not yet gotten around to fitting in). After that cruel week leading up to midterms, I had learned a valuable lesson. The following semester I took only live courses, at seemingly inconvenient times, and achieved the balanced schedule I was looking for.

My original idealistic plan had one simple flaw: it didn’t account for the strength of my already existing routine. At any given moment, I needed to know that now, and only now, was the time in which I could attend my lecture or seminar. Having the opportunity to “do it when it was convenient” ensured that I would never get around to doing it. My old routine would creep back in like a collection of weeds, eventually suffocating my new routine. The same can be said for working out.

Make Your New Workout Routine a Success By Booking a Course of Sessions With a Personal Trainer or Take a Fitness Class

Make Your New Workout Routine a Success By Booking a Course of Sessions With a Personal Trainer or Take a Fitness Class

If your routine has developed into one in which you have no fitness program and you suddenly decide that today is the day for change, you may find yourself struggling against the current of your existing habits. If in any given moment you are able to choose to “do it when it’s convenient” it’s likely that you just won’t get to it at all. So do what I did in university: take the choice away; sign up for a class or two that you have to attend at specific times or book a series of sessions with a personal trainer.

There are also a number of options other than the typical gym classes, which can be costly if you aren’t already a gym member. You can sign up to learn to swing dance, take martial arts lessons, learn bellydancing, join a community volleyball team, learn figure-skating, get certified as a lifeguard… The list goes on and on.

Most options out there are very affordable and many are available at local community centers near your home (call them for a catalogue). Best of all, when it’s class time, you can’t put it off; it’s now or not at all.

After a few weeks of meeting with a personal trainer or taking a class, you will have learned something new and you will have developed the habit of working out at regular intervals. When your session or classes  are over, you can sign up for another set, or, having now built up the momentum of this new routine, you can simply insert your favorite workouts into the now-empty time slots and glide easily into the next phase of your workout program.

This can also be useful when you need to revive your commitment to an existing workout routine that is getting crowded out by new demands and protect it from vanishing amidst a flood of intrusions. After all, your desired routine can only provide you with those fast results if it takes hold, and the easiest way to make sure procrastination and inertia don’t creep into your new routine is to simply pluck them right out of the equation.

There are many advantages to working out at home. Eliminating transit time to and from the gym makes it easier to fit your workout into your busy day. You don’t have to share equipment with any machine-hogs so you can control wait times between exercises, shortening your workout.

With A Little Planning, Even the Most Set-In-Their-Ways Gym-Goers Can Make the Transition and Benefit from the Advantages of A Home Gym Set-Up

With A Little Planning, Even the Most Set-In-Their-Ways Gym-Goers Can Make the Transition and Benefit from the Advantages of A Home Gym Set-Up

You have all the convenience of being at home, such as your own shower and all the products you’re used to, without having to lug bottles or deal with forgetting your toiletries bag at home. And, unlike your gym fees, any money you choose to spend on DVDs, weights, mats, or any of your favorite exercise equipment or tools buys you items you can keep and use for years to come.

There are also disadvantages to working out at home. The hardest disadvantage to overcome may be the social aspect of working out at a gym. Some people prefer to work out on their own so this may actually be an advantage for them. But for those for whom this difference greatly decreases the value of an at-home workout, there are a few ways you can offset this disadvantage.

First, the television is an excellent tool for combating boredom. If you own or plan to own a cardio machine, having it near a television or radio can really perk you up when you’re used to the distraction of having people around you. Listening to your favorite music or watching episodes of a show you love can replace a portion of the stimulus you have been used to.

And if you have been enjoying classes at your gym, workout shows and DVDs can provide some of that aspect of your gym workouts. Additionally, you can set up a walking date with friends and neighbors a few times a week or invite a friend, perhaps one you met at the gym, to work out together in your home(s).

People often cite the cost of equipment and the space that it takes up as deterrents to working out at home but I have personally set up everything I need for my home workouts for much less than the cost of a 6-month membership to my old gym.

I used inexpensive DVDs and television workout routines (which I recorded so that I could skip the commercials) for my cardio and I bought a compact set of free weights, a mat, and a stability ball for my strength training and flexibility routines.

The whole set-up took almost no space, cost very little, and does everything I need to get a balanced, full-body workout. I later bought an elliptical trainer and added it to my arsenal.

Finally, the lack of variety of classes, equipment, and activities available to you in comparison to the gym could lead to boredom if you don’t keep renewing your workout. When I began working out at home, I set aside a portion of what my gym fees would had been so that I could buy DVDs and fun workout gadgets and other  exercise equipment.

I now have a varied collection of DVDs, stability balls, a jump rope, a hoola hoop, fitness video games, a few VCR tapes with the best television workouts I’ve recorded over the years, and a number of other gadgets and gizmos that I find adds all the variety I can handle to my daily workout sessions. When I had some more cash, I bought a treadmill and an exercise bike to add cardio variations. Whenever I get bored with any one activity, there’s always another option within reach.

If you need to scale back your fitness budget and membership fees, don’t let that translate that into abandoning your goals altogether. An at-home workout can be fun, effective, varied, and save you a lot of money even while you build yourself collection of fitness equipment that will serve you for years to come.

When watching their calories, many people forget to calculate the liquid calories they ingest. If you’re trying to follow a sensible diet & nutrition program, it’s worth knowing that alcohol contains 7 calories per gram; that’s about 100 calories for a glass of wine and about 150 calories for a beer (depending on its alcohol content)! If you’re having a mixed drink, you’re going to take in over 200 to 300 calories. And all these calories provide you with little to no nutritional benefit.

Alcohol also makes you hungry. Who can’t think of a post-bar trip to a late night greasy spoon after a night of revelling? And since your inhibitions and your reasoning are inhibited (and alcohol has stimulated your appetite), you’re likely to eat more as well as to eat things that you wouldn’t otherwise choose to eat.

Alcohol Undermines Your Weight Loss, Diet and Fitness Plans in Almost Every Way Imaginable

Alcohol Undermines Your Weight Loss, Diet and Fitness Plans in Almost Every Way Imaginable

Alcohol also changes the rate at which you burn fat. Calories consumed as alcohol don’t get stored as fat. They get converted to a substance called “acetate.” Acetate is burned quickly by the body and is therefore burned off before the fat stores you are working hard at eliminating.

Finally, alcohol increases your insulin levels by promoting the release of extra insulin from the pancreas. This extra insulin causes your blood sugar to dip more than it should and makes you hungrier. It also causes you to make more fat and to direct that fat toward the fat cells located around the center of your body.

Not only is this extra weight less proportionately distributed and therefore more obvious to the eye, carrying your weight around the belly as opposed to distributed over the entire body is also a predictor of heart disease.

It’s perfectly fine to have a glass of wine with dinner every now and again (just remember to take those extra calories into account), but if you are consuming alcohol regularly or are binge-drinking, you are undermining all the weight loss efforts you’re putting in during the rest of your day or week.

When you are trying to Get Fit Fast, it only makes sense to limit the consumption of something that provides empty calories, makes you hungrier, converts more of the calories you take in to fat, stores more of your weight around the center of your body, and reduces your ability to make clear decisions about the foods you eat.

Try giving up alcohol for a few weeks and see if you don’t notice the scale move down a little quicker.

The 6 Kitchen Tools You Must Have!

1.    A Very Good Stainless Steel Pot and Pan Set

It can be very demoralizing to realize that the pan you bought recently is peeling and has left chunks of non-stick coating in your dinner. I don’t like using pans with non-stick coating and find the stainless steel pans work great at distributing and holding heat and I don’t have to worry about using a metal spatula in it by mistake or about what’s leaching into my food that I don’t see.

2.    An Excellent (and Sharp) Knife

Chopping can be time consuming and it’s all the more tedious if your knife isn’t top quality. The sharper the knife, the better; you are much more likely to cut yourself with a dull knife if you have to apply pressure to force the knife through the food.

3.    A Sturdy Box Grater

Obviously this is great for cheese rather than using slices as it allows you to distribute a finer amount and therefore get more bang for your calories; but it can also be used for a number of other applications. Grating carrots onto your salad as a lovely garnish, grating ginger into a stir fry to add a very quick and fresh zingy taste, grating sweet potatoes to top a sweet version of Shepherd’s Pie. It’s great for slipping more vegetables in without them taking over the whole meal. The more you use it, the more ideas you will have of other ways to use it.

4.    Freezer- and Oven-Safe Storage

Because I prepare all of my meals from scratch, if I go all out and put together an elaborate meal, I want to be able to save a few servings and save myself some time later on. I store my leftovers in individual-sized containers and freeze them. Then, when I’m on my way to work in the morning, I grab one out of the freezer and by lunch it’s ready to be popped in the office toaster over. I save hours of lunch-packing time and on nights when I don’t have time to cook, the individual sizes are quick to thaw and heat up in the oven.

Buy a Best Selling Blender - It's An Absolute Must-Have For Your Diet & Nutrition Program

Buy a Best Selling Blender - It's An Absolute Must-Have For Your Diet & Nutrition Program

5.    A Blender

Humus, smoothies, cream soups, sauces. When you control what you put into these easy to make items, you can leave out a lot of calorie-heavy ingredients and adjust the seasonings to your own preferences. If you have a blender and keep it handy you can make a wide variety of healthy meals, sides, and snacks which will give you a lot more variety without having to put together complicated recipes.

6.    An Ice Cream Maker

Last but not least, finding healthy deserts that taste great but that aren’t loaded with calories can be a challenge when you first start cooking healthy. An ice cream maker and one or two basic recipes for frozen yogurt can conquer that sweet tooth craving without throwing your plans off course. You need only add your favorite fruits (fresh or frozen) to a basic vanilla or other neutral recipe to have a tasty low calorie desert.

But when you’re spending more money than you should be, there are two ways you can fix the problem. One way is to spend less, the other is to earn more. Let’s look at how you can “earn more” calories to spend in order to either lose more weight or be able to eat a few more of your favorites.

When you run out of money and you need to pay off debt, sometimes you may need to take a second part-time job for a while, do a little extra work on the side, maybe freelance here and there, or find some other way of earning extra money. Weight loss is the same.

Weight Loss is Simply About Burning More Calories Than We Take In

Weight Loss is Simply About Burning More Calories Than We Take In

Increase The Activity Levels

If you’ve gone over your spending limit long enough that you are now carrying extra weight, or if you would like to loosen up how much you are able to eat without gaining weight, you might want to consider upping your activity level. This work you do on the side can be in addition to your regular workout or, if you don’t have a regular workout, it can mean starting one.

Is there somewhere in your schedule you can slide in a few more minutes of workout time here and there? Perhaps a little elliptical work for 10 to 15 minutes before you jump in the shower at the start of your day? Maybe a brisk walk or jog on the treadmill while you’re waiting for the pasta to boil?

What about taking a walk around the block in the evening for a half an hour instead of watching reruns of that show you don’t even really like all that much? Any little moments of extra time that you can squeeze in will add up and, unlike overtime or a part-time job, no one needs to approve your extra hours and you don’t have to send out any résumés!

Increase The Intensity

Another way to earn more is to get a raise. If you don’t have the time (or the desire) to work out anymore than you already are, then maybe what you need to do is earn more in the time you are already using. Increase the amount of calories you’re burning by walking at 4 miles per hour instead of 3, but for the same amount of time. Turn up the tension on your workout machine just a little or supercharging your cardio workout and burn more calories in the same amount of time.

It can sometimes feel like there is no rhyme or reason to our weight loss efforts or their woes but, just like your finances, it’s really just a matter of not spending more than you’re earning. Weight loss is just as much of a numbers game as our personal finances are and if we treat it that way, we can get where we want to be faster.

If you’re good at handling your finances, but are still struggling with your weight, the good news is these skills are perfectly transferable.

Since you’ve already calculated the amount of calories you have to spend (see Calorie Counting: Calculating Your Dieting Budget – Part 1), we can move right on to applying that. First, we need to measure the cost of the various items. It can be very hard to estimate the number of calories in the foods we eat.

People Underestimate Calories

In fact, when people are asked to roughly estimate the caloric content in a large meal, one set of studies showed that people underestimated calories by 23 to 38%! If you want to make sure you’re not exceeding your daily calorie budget, you need to have a better idea than that about what you’re eating.

Conveniently, doing this 7-day food journal exercise helps you get a more accurate idea of that. Chances are that a large percentage of what you eat regularly will show up over the course of these 7 days and you will have a much better idea of the caloric “cost” of many of your regular items.

You may find yourself surprised by how high or low some of your regulars are in calories. You don’t need to memorize these numbers, but after collecting and tallying a week’s worth of food, you now have a ballpark idea of what these foods are worth.

Use a Financial Model of Weight Loss to Balance Your Checkbook and The Scales!

Use a Financial Model of Weight Loss to Balance Your Checkbook and The Scales!

Armed with this information, you can begin to change the amounts you eat so that you begin eating less calories than you’re burning. If you wanted to save $35.00 a week, you would have to spend $5.00 less each day than you earn. In order to lose a pound a week (3,500 calories), you will need to be burning 500 calories more than you are taking in every day.

An easy way to keep track of this while keeping the financial model in mind (without going so far as to write out every last calorie) is to pick up a pack of “fake” money. Any play money will do but having play money with different denominations (10, 50, 100) will work best. You can usually pick packs of play money up at dollar stores, toy stores, or, if you have an old board game that no one uses, you can commandeer its bankroll.

Get yourself an old wallet, a couple of envelopes, a couple of jars, whatever will work for you. Count out an amount of play dollars equivalent to the daily calorie budget that you calculated yesterday. Then use one envelope or jar to hold what’s left to spend for the day, and another to hold the amount you’ve spent.

Spend Wisely

Since you now have an idea of what your most common foods cost you in terms of calories, when you eat, simply move approximately the same amount of dollars from your “to spend” envelope, jar, or pile, to the “spent” pile when you eat. Try to “spend wisely” so that you will have $500 left in the jar at the end of the day.

If you have any play money left in the “to spend” jar, even if you don’t have a full $500, you will have lost a little weight that day. Just like with saving money, if you do that for enough days, it really adds up.

So if you’re good at finances, but having a little trouble with weight loss, use what you know you’re good at to help get you through what you’re having trouble with. Use a financial model of weight loss and before you know it, both your checkbook and the scales will be perfectly balanced.

My guess is that would be pretty hard on your budget and would cause you some pretty serious problems were you to do it regularly. Yet, that’s what many people do with their daily caloric intake and energy expenditure.

Do The Math

Losing weight isn’t complicated, it’s a little math. You have to burn more 3,500 more calories than you take in to lose one pound of fat. Losing weight is like saving money. Earn more than you spend and, in the long run, you’ll reach your goal.

Calorie Counting Doesn't Have To Be A Pain

Calorie Counting Doesn't Have To Be A Pain

Now, I’m not suggesting you start counting every calorie you eat or burn from now on, but wouldn’t it make sense to have a ballpark idea of how many calorie “dollars” you were spending every day? And it would probably be useful to find out how many you have to spend as well.

There are a number of different calculations out there to determine how many calories your body needs to maintain your current weight or to lose weight but it is an imperfect science since it is difficult to measure your exact amount of regular activity and even more difficult to guess your body’s exact metabolic speed. You can kill two birds with one stone by keeping a food journal for a week.

Okay I can already hear sighing out there. Before you open your email editor to write me a disgruntled email about why you won’t be one of those people who calculates every amount of food they ingest, take a deep breath, and read on. I’m not suggesting you do this for the rest of your life or even for the rest of the time you are working on weight loss.

Keep Track

I’m suggesting that you keep track of what you eat (day, item, quantity, and portion size) for 7 days. Include how much mayonnaise you put on your sandwich, whether you had one or two tablespoons of dressing on your small salad, your cup and a half of OJ with breakfast, and so on. After that time, you’ll have a good idea of how many calories your body needs to either maintain, gain, or lose weight.

On the first day, weigh yourself in the morning before you begin eating or drinking. Do the same on the 8th day. If there has been a change in weight, note it (in pounds will be easiest so that you won’t have to convert it later on during calculations. Then, review each day in your journal and count up how many calories you ate over the course of each day.

There are a number of websites and books out there with calorie information for at least the most common foods. Some are surprisingly complete and have information for even unusual or exotic items. The USDA even has a National Nutrient Database available online that you can use. Once you tally the calories in each day, add the total of all the days together and make note of your weekly calorie total.

Did You Lose or Gain?

If you lost or gained weight during the week, take the amount you lost or gained (in pounds) and multiply it by 3,500. If you lost weight, add this new multiplied number to your calorie total for the week. If you gained weight, subtract it from your week’s calorie total.

Finally, divide the result of this addition or subtraction by 7 and you will get your average daily calorie intake to maintain your weight at your current activity level. This is like figuring out your salary. This is how much you can “spend” without gaining or losing weight.

In the next post in this series Calorie Counting: Calculating Your Dieting Budget – Part 2, we’ll look at the other side of your calorie budget and how to better estimate and factor in the “cost” of the things you are spending your “calorie salary” on when you are eating (without constant calorie counting).