How to Lose Weight

All effective weight loss plans have certain elements in common. In order to lose weight, most of us need to take five steps in the following order:

1. Track your food intake. Write down every bite of everything, measuring your portions as you serve them. Data from the National Weight Control Registry (of which I am a member) shows that this one step is absolutely necessary (and for many people, all that is necessary to actually lose weight).

2. Control your food intake. Whether you count Weight Watcher points (the commercial program with the most proven data), count calories, count fat grams or count bites, you must set a limit and stay at or not far under it. It's trendy to refer to dieting as a "lifestyle change," but in the case of people who are overweight, it boils down to one thing. You must eat less food than you currently are eating.

3. Increase your cardiovascular activity. Walking, biking, swimming, belly dancing, you name it--you need to move in a rhythmic way that elevates your heart rate, brings you to a light sweat and uses up the excess calories you've already stored.

4. Increase your muscle mass. Aging and sedentary lifestyles lead to shrinking muscle mass and slowing metabolisms. What you deplete, you must put back! Strength training with weights, bands, calisthenics, walking hills, et cetera, rebuilds the muscles and create more "fat-burning factories" in the body.

While most personal trainers start right off with strength training for weight loss clients, I feel this is putting the cart before the horse. If your diet is too rich and you aren't even managing a little walk now and then, you may tone up with strength training--but you will not lose weight.

5. Reduce stress/increase flexibility. Practices such as yoga alleviate stress, which is often the catalyst for overeating. In addition, the reduced joint and back pain from a little stretching each day allows you to enjoy a more active lifestyle--spending weekends at the park with grandkids, for example, instead of on the couch in front of Seinfeld reruns. Will yoga alone use enough calories to lose weight? Probably not--especially if you eat back the calories you burn. That said, most of the thinnest people I work with are regular yoga practitioners and instructors.

Does this list look overwhelming? Are you irritated with me because I did not write anything you haven't heard before? Are your shoulders in your ears because you know you should pick up a pen and write down what you ate for breakfast (and early-morning snack, and late-morning snack, and early lunch and late lunch) but you just don't want to?

Okay. That's okay. Take a deep breath now. Then face your decision. You are either choosing at this moment to take step 1 and work on 1-5, or you are choosing not to. You are choosing to begin losing weight--or you are choosing to stay where you are at this moment. But there's one more thing you should know . . .

People who succeed at losing weight don't go it alone. They get help. They find walking buddies. They hire personal trainers. They take classes with friends. They attend support groups. They make the choice, then they structure their communities to support that choice.

Make the choice. Get support. Take the steps. Lose the weight.

You can do this.

P.S. Need a reminder to read your motivator? E-mail me at keri@radiantfitness.com to subscribe (or put it in your feeds list). Think I'm right on the money or full of baloney? Hit "comments" below to leave your two cents.