Tip #16 - Only Be As Precise As You Can Be

When keeping food diaries, it is important to give a good estimate as to how much of each food you are consuming. Am I suggesting that you weigh your food? No! That to me would be a little insane. What I am saying is give your best gestimate as too how much you are eating. Look online for guidelines on how to determine what is a serving of each type of food. When keeping food diaries, be as accurate as possible in how much you eat, but by all means do not spend as much time measuring your food as you spend eating it.

Tip #15 - Portion Control

Portion control is probably the hardest part about losing weight. You are eating the right foods, yet you are still over weight. This is most likely because you are eating too much. There are a couple of ways to help control how much food you are eating. First of all, look back at your food diaries for how much of each food you ate. Also, stop taking seconds; eat what is on your plate and that is your meal. Another portion problem is created by eating meals family style, with huge containers of food sitting at the table ready to be eaten. Instead, serve each person from the kitchen so it is much harder to eat more food. Finally, use smaller plates, this way you will not be able to fit as much food on your plate and will be forced to eat less. Sometimes it is not what you eat, but how much that is preventing weight loss.

Tip #14 - Keep Food Diaries

It is important to keep a log of what you are eating especially at the very beginning of a diet or weight loss routine. Very often we find ourselves eating food and not even realizing it. Make sure that you write down EVERYTHING that you eat. If you do not, you are only cheating yourself. Do your best to estimate the quantity of the food you are eating. i.e. 3 ounces of chicken is about the size of the palm of your hand. At the end of each week, review your diaries and see where you need improvement. Remember, you always want a well balanced diet with fruits, vegetables, proteins, and all other food groups. These diaries will help in improve your diet the next week and in the weeks to come.

Tip #13 - Never Stop Eating

I talked about how you need to balance yourself and be extra strict one day if you decide to indulge during another, but strict does not mean you not allowed to eat. Anorexia is a serious disease and it will NOT help you lose weight, nor is it healthy. Your body needs food and energy to survive. No matter how hard you find losing weight is, always keep eating. What you need to do is eat the right things and exercise. These two things combined will help you lose weight. Eating no food is NOT the right way to lose weight. YOU WILL HURT YOURSELF.

Tip #12 - Forget About The Past, Think About The Future

Just as you want to leave your days of being over weight behind, you need to learn to forget about mistakes and think about how to rectify them. For instance, if you ate too much one day, make sure that you are extra strict for the rest of the week, or throw in 20 more minutes of exercise a day. I know if I splurge one day, I must exercise extra the day after. Just remember, what’s done is done. You cannot go back and eat less; you just need to figure out ways to make up for your previous splurges.

Tip #11 - The Glass Is Always Half Full

Make sure that you look at everything that happens during your weight loss from an optimistic angle. If you weigh the same two weeks in a row, do not worry, that is a good thing. You have stopped the weight gain. As long as you are not gaining weight you are ahead of the game. There is always two ways to look at a situation, always take the positive side.

Tip #10 - Don't Go Crazy Over Weighing Yourself

Tip #9 talked about the importance of measuring your weight loss and keeping track of your progress. Tip #10 is about keeping yourself sane. For your sake do not weight yourself more than twice a week. You will end up going nuts. You know if you had a good day or a bad day in terms of eating. Base your daily intake on this gut feeling and not what the scale says. If you continually are weighing yourself you will get too caught up in the number on the scale and stop thinking about the ultimate goal, losing weight and creating a healthy lifestyle. Weighing yourself too much will only hurt your progress and your feelings. Make sure to step on the scale at least once a week to know how you did for the week, but do not abuse the scale. It is there as a guide, not something to rely on everyday. And remember, I only say this for your sanity. I only weighed in once a week with the dietician (or weight watchers or Jenny Craig, whoever you decide to use) and it worked like a charm.

Tip #9 - Measurement

There are many ways to measure weight loss. A scale, the mirror and your clothes are just a few. Make sure you use as many as possible. At the beginning of your weight loss, it is important to weigh yourself in order to get a benchmark of where your weight is. Also, take note how you look in the mirror and how your clothes fit. All these things are good indications of how your weight loss is going. Sometimes you will not see results in all areas of measurement. Do not be discouraged. Weight loss works in mysterious ways, as long as you see some improvement you are on the right track. Any improvement is a plus. Be certain to have at least a scale and maybe a few other forms of measurement for weight loss. These become great motivations for losing more weight.

Tip #8 - Water

This is about as easy a tip to follow as I can give. Drink tons and tons of water. Don't drink it as a substitute for food, but nothing helps a diet more than drinking at least 8 glasses of pure water a day. I drink so much water a day I lose track. It is good to drink in order to flush toxins out of your body. Also, water is important not only for weight loss, but your body in general. A minimum of 8 glasses of water a day is optimal for weight loss and a healthy lifestyle.

Tip #7 - Get A Pedometer

The easiest way to get the needed exercise is to invest in a pedometer. A pedometer is a tiny gadget that you wear on your belt to track the number of steps you take per day. This is a device that costs no more than 20 dollars and it can be the most useful piece of exercise equipment you will ever buy. Studies show that walking 10,000 steps everyday will help you lose 1-2 pounds a week (of course, along with a healthy diet). I started using a pedometer as an exercise monitor and that way I knew how much extra physical activity I needed a day (to hear more about my pedometer stories follow the My Teenage Weight Loss link to the right). Buy a pedometer, they are cheap and it is a great way to get you on the right track to more exercise with less effort.

Tip #6 - Work Up To Exercising 5 Days A Week

In my last tip i recommended that you try to exercise 5 days a week for at least 30 minutes. I will admit that this is no easy task to start doing all of the sudden. I suggest that you build up to working out about 45-60 minutes 5-6 days a week. I recommend you strive for an exercise routine that can be this intensive. A workout schedule that is 5-6 days a week and 45-60 minutes will surely garentee weight loss when paired with a balanced diet.

What you should do is work in time in your schedule to exercise for 30 minutes 3 days a week. After a few weeks add 2-3 more days, this way you are working out 5-6 days a week. As you get conforable with exercising almost everyday, then it is time to increase your physical activity per day. Do not dive into a work out routine head first, you will only get discouraged. The best thing to do is build up to a comfortable exercise regiment with the ultimate goal being 30-45 minutes of physical activity 5-6 days a week.

Tip #5 - Exercising

There is only one way to successfully lose weight, and that is with some sort of physical activity. Aside from the fact that I was eating the wrong things and had a portion control problem, my main issue was not enough exercise. I would consider my exercise to be playing baseball every once in a while with friends or any type of activity that i would partake in in gym class. But who was I kidding, I was not working out at all, I was just being a kid. I was a fat kid who was only gaining weight, the only way to stop and reverse this weight gain was with exercise.

While part of losing weight is controlling your diet, that must be combined with some sort of exercise regiment. Diet can help stop the weight gain, but the only way to lose weight is with a combination of diet and exercise. When i talk about exercise I am referring to at least 30 minutes of an elevated heart rate at least 5 times a week. With this sort of exercise and a healthy diet, your weight loss will occur.

Tip #4 - Stick With Your Weight Loss and Diet

Don’t go through the pain and struggle of losing weight or trying to lose weight if you are only going to adhere to the rules half the time or decide to only give a half hearted effort. If you are going to try and lose weight then you must commit yourself 100%. I know people who are on a diet one day and off a diet the next. Sorry, but this will never work. I have tried it in the past. If you are only dieting selectively you might as well not even diet at all because you will become extremely frustrated and you will never be successful at long terms weight loss. I know it sounds harsh, but you if you are serious about losing weight then you need to attack your weight problem seriously and that means going all out. Change your lifestyle, learn how to eat right, create an exercise routine. Weight loss is not a one-time deal; it is a lifetime commitment. If you lose some weight and then revert back to your old habits you have gotten nowhere. You will gain the weight back instantly. Losing weight has to do with changing your life for the long haul. You must decide when it is time to make this change and lose weight. I cannot stress enough that you cannot effectively lose weight until you have come to the point where you can become totally committed to losing weight, changing your lifestyle, and creating a new and improved life for yourself. Do not look at weight loss as a short-term fix to being overweight, think of losing weight as a long-term fix to your obesity.

Tip #3 – Find A Support System and Get Guidance For Losing Weight

I was very luck to be able to have two support systems throughout my weight loss process. Just having one is very important, but of course, the more the merrier.

Ever since I decided it was time to lose weight, I knew my father was with me 100% of the way. He had been through the weight loss process before and knows how difficult yet rewarding it can be. It was great having his success story as a motivation as well as having his guidance on losing weight, portion control and what to eat. My dad’s was especially helpful in the beginning, when I decided not to weigh each piece of food I ate, and not to count calories. It was great to base my portions on what my father ate. My dad provided the support and inspiration to continue trying to lose weight through adversity. My continual push to succeed ended up paying off.

My father was by far the best support system and guide available to me, but I did call upon one more person, a dietician. Lisa Bunce, my dietician, is the person I attribute to saving my life. Life more in social and psychological terms than physical terms, but do not get me wrong, if I continued to gain weight I had some serious medical problems ahead of me (for more information, see my story about my weight loss in the My Teenage Weight Loss link to the right). With my dad providing the inspiration and Lisa as my guide, I found a way to beat obesity. Could I have succeeded in maintaining a healthy diet and weight loss without a support system? Probably. But I certainly do not want to find out, and I think that the weight loss process would have been that much harder without Lisa and my dad there along the way.

I understand that not everyone can find this support as easily as I did. I encourage you to go to a Jenny Craig or a Weight Watchers. I know Curves has been great for my mother. Seek out these diet-consulting places; they can do wonders in advice and in keeping you in check. Always remember, you must weigh in every week.

As I said, my dad was very instrumental in helping me lose weight, but I think this is true not because he is my father, but because he is also my friend. Find a friend to help you lose weight, and use them as your #1 support. Lose weight with your partner, work out together, let them motivate you and vice versa. There is always strength in numbers. For example, my next goal is to run an Iron Man triathlon. The first thing I did was to call a few friends to find out if they would like to train with me. Friends are the most important people in your life. I cannot stress enough the importance of creating a support system around you in your weight loss endeavors. It will make the weight loss process that much easier and smoother.

Tip #3 is definitely a thank you to Lisa Bunce and my dad Eric. As much as they both claim that I can pull off anything I set my mind to, I would have had a hell of a time losing weight without them. Thank you Lisa and Dad, together the three of us saved my life.

Tip # 2 - Goals

It is very important that you set goals before, during, and after your weight loss. Have many different types of goals: long range, short term, easily achieved, slightly unrealistic. Make them specific. My first goal was to lose weight, that is nice, but what qualified as losing weight. I later refined that goal to losing 50 lbs and/or being at a weight healthy for my body. This was the main goal, but I also had little goals along the way:

-I wanted to lose weight every week. I never wanted to come into the dietician’s office having put on pounds.
-I wanted to fit into a smaller pant size. The best feeling in the world is going shopping for new clothes because your old ones fall off your body.
-I wanted to get into some sort of exercise routine that I enjoyed and was good at. I found running, it was incredibly successful for me.
-I wanted to beat my dad in a 5k race, or even be able to run and complete a 5k race for that matter.
-I wanted to be someone other than the fat kid at school. I wanted to have the self-confidence to ask girls out. Trust me, this all comes, but it starts with that first main goal, losing 50 lbs.

All the goals listed above are realistic, but that does not mean I don't have far fetched goals also:

-At first my goal was to run a marathon, but then I spoke to this guy who had run and Iron Man Triathlon and I decided that I had to become an Iron Man too. I'm still working on this one.

Now that is an unrealistic fantasy at this point, but that does not mean I'm not allowed to think about it and try.

The point is that you need goals so that you can achieve them. You need to see yourself succeeding in your weight loss by completing some of your goals. What kept me losing weight, even during the hard times (and there were plenty of those), was the desire to reach and surpass my goals. Just make sure that when setting goals you set all different kinds, weekly, monthly, annually. Be certain that you can achieve some of those goals in order to prove to yourself that you are moving forward in losing weight. Always remember, anything is possible if you believe in yourself you can achieve through all adversity.

Tip #1 - Lose Weight Because It Is Something YOU Want To Do

For my first tip, I think I must share what I feel is the trick to losing weight. The key to weight loss is to try and lose the weight for no other reason than because you want to. Don't try to shed the pounds because your doctor says you need to, or because your parents or friends are pressuring you. That is not to say don't let these things contribute to you deciding it is time to lose weight, but do it for the stupid reasons: you want to fit into a smaller size pant, or because you want to gain more self-confidence, or because you really want to be able to run a 5k race. All these reasons to lose weight are great, they are things that you want to do for yourself. I am just saying that in order to lose weight, you yourself must want to lose it.

I looked in the mirror and said "Aaron it is time to lose weight, you CAN be smart and good looking at the same time." I had that goal in my head from the beginning. This is not to say I was not pushed to create that goal by some of the factors like family pressure, but in the end, I wanted to lose weight for myself. I wanted to fit in the smaller pants, I wanted to look good, and I wanted to run (and beat my dad) in a 5k race. I think that is why I had so much success and was able to lose 75 lbs and achieve most of my goals.