Works for Me Wednesday: Weight Loss Techniques
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In all my weight loss efforts, I can honestly say, that I have never been one for fad diets. Don’t get me wrong; that doesn’t mean that I’ve never tried them…but not often. For a little while, I tried the Atkins diet (lasted a week or two). I’ve tried the cabbage diet. That wasn’t pretty. Cabbage does really unattractive things to your digestive system. Enough said. In my twenties, I tried those diet pills with the now infamous phen-fen. My apartment was really, really clean.
The truth is, though, no matter how you slice it, weight loss boils down to one simple thing: calories in/calories out. The most success I’ve ever had losing weight was right before I got pregnant with my oldest. Of course. I was in the best shape of my life and it was because I was eating sensibly and working out three or four nights a week.
Since then, I have found a couple of resources that make sense to me. One is SparkPeople. SparkPeople is a free, online nutrition and fitness tracking tool. You log in the foods you eat each day and the exercise that you do. You can track your weight loss, along with other things such as amount of water consumed, body measurements, and customized goals that you may have for yourself.
SparkPeople will provide you with a suggested menu and fitness program for each day. It has videos that you can watch to learn how to do different exercises, weekly newsletters to keep you motivated, and tips for each stage of your weight-loss journey. You can even use the “recipe calculator” to input the ingredients in your favorite recipes, divided by the number of calories, to find out the nutritional information for your favorite foods.
The other resource is Weight Watchers. I was very successful on WW a few years ago, losing almost 40 lbs., until I hit a plateau, got frustrated and gave up. I used WW’s Points system. The thing I liked best about this system was that I could eat whatever I wanted to, as long as I was willing to count the points for it. This was a great thing, psychologically, for me because I felt like any deprivation involved in my eating choices was just that — my choice.
Since I got my bodybugg, I’ve been using their calorie-tracking system to log my food each day — but I use Weight Watchers to keep track of what I’ve consumed as I go through the day. I hate counting calories and, since my WW Points allotment roughly corresponds to my daily calorie budget, it keeps me on track. I log everything I eat in my food journal so that I don’t forget anything when I sit down to log my food into the BodyBugg system, just counting points as I go.
This really works for me. The best weight loss technique or program ultimately, though, is the one that works for YOU. Whatever makes it easiest to ensure that calories in is less than calories out every day is the best one for you. Which ones have been helpful for you?
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Kris Bales is a newly-retired homeschool mom and the quirky, Christ-following, painfully honest founder (and former owner) of Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers. She has a pretty serious addiction to sweet tea and Words with Friends. Kris and her husband of over 30 years are parents to three amazing homeschool grads. They share their home with three dogs, two cats, a ball python, a bearded dragon, and seven birds.
A weekly food journal is the most helpful for me. (It's really more of a calendar than a journal though.)
I used Weight Watchers twice and it really worked for me (until I stopped paying attention to the program…and then magically I returned to my old habits and regained the weight. All my fault though…the program is great). Good luck with your weight loss endeavor.