Stop drinking sugary soda

A 16 ounce cola has around 190 calories. That’s 190 calories of sugar, which for many people, will only make you hungrier an hour or two later.  If you want to lose weight more easily, this is a simple change.

Can’t stand diet soda? Switch to water instead. It’s even better, and you’ll avoid the artificial sweeteners.

Skip after dinner snacks

If you’re trying to lose weight, snacking in front of the television in the evenings can be a real diet breaker. One ounce of chips has around 150 calories, and lets face it, who can eat only one ounce? That’s a REALLY small serving, and I know that I don’t stick to that when snacking.

Try doing something with your hands while watching television to prevent snacking. Even better, get up and DO something instead of watching t.v.!

Get a little exercise

You don’t have to hit the gym for hours every week in order to lose ten pounds, or any amount of weight. Rather than make drastic lifestyle changes you’re not likely to keep up, try making smaller changes instead. Take the dog for a walk, wear a pedometer, mow the grass yourself instead of hiring someone to do it.

Skip dessert

Desserts can be loaded in extra calories. Try having a special dessert only once or twice a week instead of something sweet daily. A nice dessert at your favorite restaurant will be more enjoyable than a handful of cookies you eat in front of the t.v. As an added bonus, you won’t have the leftovers at home to tempt you.

Say no to second helpings

This is an easy way to lose a few pounds. Eat whatever you want, in your normal serving sizes. By not going back for seconds, you’ll cut your calories without feeling deprived. Take the leftovers for lunch and save money and calories by avoiding the fast food drive through.

Beware of Salads

What? Salads can be a great addition to your diet. They’re nutritious and low calorie, and they can certainly help in your weight loss efforts. However, if you’re topping your salad with diced eggs, shredded cheese, full-calorie dressing, beans, etc., you can be adding hundreds of calories to it that you don’t intend. That salad can end up with as many calories as a burger and fries!

Manage Stress

Stress makes many of us eat more than we should; I know it has that effect on me. Work on dealing with your stress before it contributes to a weight problem. If you’re trying to lose weight, try doing an activity you enjoy that helps you wind down and deal with the stress of your day.

Find Hidden Calories

A tablespoon of mayonnaise has 100 calories. A typical sandwich might have one or two tablespoons on it. Honey mustard has almost 50 calories per ounce. A baked potato is a good choice for lunch, until you add hundreds of calories in butter and sour cream. Adding cream to soups drastically increases their calorie count. Examine the recipes for what you’re eating and cut the extra calories that don’t contribute much to the dish’s flavor.

Be careful in restaurants

If you’re trying to lose weight, eating out can be very problematic. Portion sizes are large, and having a wide selection of food in front of you is tempting. Try ordering your meal instead of eating off the buffet. Most people will eat more from a buffet than they intend to. Order an appetizer instead of an entree, or split an entree with someone. Try drinking water or unsweet tea instead of soda.

Stop obsessing

Paradoxically, being hyper-focused on your weight is one of the worst thing you can do for your weight loss efforts. Instead, focus on eating healthy food, getting some exercise, and taking care of yourself overall. Doing those things and making simple, gradual changes will help you take off that ten pounds!

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101 thoughts on losing 100 pounds
Lots and lots of great tips. Some are common sense, but others were surprising and insightful.

What Sugar does to your Brain
High sugar diets are just not good for you!

Blood Sugar 101
A lot of people don’t understand what diabetes is or how it works. Sadly, that applies to a lot of diabetics as well! This site has some great information.

10 Tips for Safe Outdoor Exercise
Great tips for summer exercisers.

Decade by Decade Guide to Exercise
Tips for exercising, whether you’re in your 20’s, 30’s, 40’s or beyond.

Avoid these 7 Danger Foods…
The focus is on avoiding the freshman 15, but this advice applies to anyone.

Top 10 Ways to Stay Energized
Lots of tips for keeping your energy levels high. Not strictly a diet- or fitness-related post, but useful nonetheless.

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I made it for about a week. We did some work over the weekend, and I spent a couple hours pulling up old carpet. That’s definitely exercise, but it also made me really sore and tired. I didn’t exercise for a couple of days, and I fell out of the rhythm of it.

Now, I’m coming down with a cold, so I doubt I’ll get back on track for a few days. It just goes to show how difficult changing your lifestyle can be! I never said I thought I’d have an easy time of it.

After I’m feeling better, I’m going to try to come up with some other method to motivate myself. Ideas?

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The routine has good warmup and cardio. I liked the fact that you can follow beginner, intermediate or advanced exercises all along the routine without picking a particular one and sticking with it. So, you can mix any of the three levels if some exercises are easier or harder for you. The music is good without being annoying or distracting. The instructor is pleasant without having any of the creepy cheerfulness that some aerobics teachers have!

This tape does include some floor exercises for toning, which isn’t something I was really looking for. I want something that’s a bit heavier on cardio and lighter on toning, but it’s a good workout nonetheless. I haven’t made it the whole way through the tape yet, but I think it’s one I’ll use again.

I’m out of shape (who’d have guessed?), but I made it a little more than 15 minutes at the beginner level. I could have gone longer, but I wasn’t in the mood to do the floor exercises. I did some additional cardio instead and called it a night. I’m not sure if I’ll do this one again tomorrow, this time with the floor routine, or look for something heavier on cardio. I guess I’ll just see what mood I’m in.

In case you hadn’t guessed, this was my exercise routine for tonight. After two nights of Wii boxing, my poor arms will not take that again. Wow, I wouldn’t have guessed I’d get so sore so quickly!

We were out of town the first weekend of May, so I didn’t get started when I planned. After that, well I just procrastinated. I finally started yesterday and have exercised yesterday and today. I’ll keep the blog updated on how it’s going.

Yesterday my husband and I did about 40 minutes of Wii boxing and tennis. If you’re thinking that isn’t really exercise, I’d say that the boxing definitely is. I’m pretty competitive with that, so I work up a sweat.

Today, I did just 10 minutes of boxing. My arms are really sore from yesterday, and I was just tired. I committed to 10 minutes a day, and I also promised myself that I’d let myself off the hook once that was done, if I wanted.

I’m really not an exercise person, so I know doing this for 30 days straight will be a toughie for me. I’ve got some exercise videos to try out on netflix, the wii programs, the bowflex, and all of outdoors. I’m hoping that it will be easier if I try to keep it from getting boring!

Here are some things I’m going to do / try to keep myself on track.

• Variety. I’ve got several different exercises lined up, some of which are really simple to do.  I’m hoping that this will keep me from getting bored, or getting one set of muscles too tired or sore.
• Reward. Like I said, I’m really, really not an exercise person. I plan on buying myself something if I get through the 30 days. I’m going to buy enough nice yarn for a winter sweater.
• Accountability. I’m announcing my goal here, aren’t I? 
  
• Focus on the positive. While Idon’t like exercise, I also realize that it makes me feel better. I feel more energetic when I exercise, so I focus on that rather than how boring the exercise time will be.
• Don’t overdo. I have a tendency to jump right in and burn myself out. I’m resisting that urge by limiting my time and not letting myself get too sore or tired. I’d rather exercise moderately all 30 days that do a few hard sessions and give it up.

And by the way, I’m STILL working on the blog carnival. I was surprised by the number of submissions, and very pleased. As soon as I’ve finished, you’ll be seeing the post.

Anyone else out there doing your own exercise habit? How is it going?

Right now, I’m going to get some much needed sleep. I’ll be working on the posts for the blog carnival tomorrow. This has been pretty successful, so I think I’ll start doing a monthly carnival.

If you’d like to keep tabs on the results of this carnival and on the ones upcoming, subscribe to my RSS feed and follow me on twitter.

I’m also prepping for my May monthly habit — exercising daily. My goal is to establish the habit of exercising every day, not necessarily get in lots of workout time. So, I’m setting a low daily goal of 10 minutes. My thought behind that is that if the goal is easy enough to achieve, I’ll experience less resistance in doing it. After all, anyone should be able to do 10 minutes of exercise, right?

I’m hoping that the habit will “stick” after doing it for a month. Only then will I work on increasing the amount of time I spend working out.  For now, I’ll work out for 10 minutes and then let myself off the hook if I want to. Knowing that I can quit, guilt free, should help me build the habit.

To that end, I’ve been planning how I’ll work in the exercise. We have a bowflex that I’m getting ready for use. We also have a netflix account, and there are some exercise videos available there to watch instantly.  My husband and I are going to get our bicycles ready this weekend as well.

I think it’s important to plan to change a habit. The bigger the habit change, the more advanced planning is often necessary. I’m working on being ready to kick off my habit on May 1.

Will anyone join me? If not for the exercise daily habit, then maybe there’s another you want to work on?

If you’ve tried to lose weight, then you know the basic calculation; one pound is 3500 calories. So, let’s say that you want to lose one pound a week, then you cut 500 calories per day. Easy, right?

Except. How do you know how many calories you’re already eating per day? Can you safely cut more than 500, or is 500 too much to cut?

The first thing you need to know isn’t how many calories to cut. It’s how many calories you need to eat per day to maintain your current weight.

Calculate It

You can use something like the Calories per day Calculator to get an approximation. Most of these calculators will take into account your sex, age and activity level in making the estimate.

Age: In general, the older you get the fewer calories you burn.

Sex: Men will tend to burn more calories than women because of their higher muscle mass.

Activity Level: This one is obvious. Higher activity levels mean you burn more calories.

You can also get a rough estimate simply by multiplying your weight by 10.

Try a few calculators and the multiply by 10 method. You won’t get results that match exactly, but your numbers should hover around a particular range.

Observe It

This method takes longer, but I think it’s more accurate. Take a couple of weeks, maybe a month, and track everything you eat.

1. Be careful to weigh and measure your food and calculate your calories correctly.
2. Don’t change your diet or exercise.
3. Weigh each week and verify that your weight isn’t changing.

This method is more difficult, but it should give you a good estimate of how many calories you can eat. Compare it to the calculations you did in the first section and see how close they are.

One benefit to this method is if you have a particularly slow metabolism, you’re likely to get a more accurate result. Also, you’ll benefit from developing a habit of journaling what you eat!

Daily Calories vs. Average Daily Calories

It’s tempting to think of calories as something that you should watch from day to day, but it’s really the overall effect of your calories that matters.

We’ve all experience this, I’m sure. You eat a huge meal, weigh the next morning and find that you’ve gained a pound or two. You think that it was your binge the previous day, but that isn’t really possible, unless you ate a 7000 calorie meal! (2 pounds x 3500 calories each)

What’s more likely is that you gained some water weight from the big meal, and that it will resolve itself in a few days. OR, you’ve been eating more calories than you ought to for more than one day, and you’ve truly gained 2 pounds.

Watching your AVERAGE daily calories over a period of at least a week will let you keep things in perspective. Let’s say you plan on eating 1500 calories a day, but you have one day in the week where you ate about 2000 calories. That’s bad, right?

Not necessarily, if you were able to keep your average down around 1500. So, maybe you ate only 1400 calories for a few days to make up for the splurge.  I find this way of tracking calories more realistic. It allows me to not feel as if I’ve failed when I exceed my daily goals.

Wrap Up

To sum up, this is what I’m doing.

1. I’m tracking what I eat this month to develop the food journaling habit and determine how many calories I can eat per day and maintain my weight.
2. I’ll use those figures to determine what calorie count I should aim for each day.
3. I’ll focus on my weekly calorie average, not the daily calorie count, to track how I’m doing.