Choose an evaluation day

I've posted about this in the past. I've typically chosen Friday or Sunday, as my client's "evaluation day" but you can choose any day you like.

Basically, once a week, you evaluate how you are doing on your weight loss or weight maintenance program.

You step on the scale, you see if you've lost 2 pounds, or kept off 2 pounds...or if, you've gained.

And then you analyze why this happened.

My program is all about portion control. There's no need to count calories (although of course you should have some idea of what kinds of calories you consume. A large piece of Chocolate cake is going to have a lot of calories, one chocolate chip cookies not quite as much, a salad with dressing even less. That's easy to figure out - the better food tastes - the more calories it's going to have.)

In order to lose weight, you must burn more calories than you consume. To do it safely, you will burn/consume these calories over the course of a week, and after a week, you should have lost two pounds. No more than that. If you're losing more than two pounds a week, you may be dieting a bit too strenuously - and that is not healthy for you.

Remember also that weight loss is easier than weight maintenance. Statistics show that most people who lose weight gain it all back within 5 years. That's because they go back to their old lifestyle after they've successfully lost weight the first time, and that cannot be done.

A new lifestyle must be adopted and lived to ensure that you don't regain the weight you worked so hard to lose.

Regaining weight is a bit psychological and a bit physical. Psychological, because when you're trying to lose weight, there's a tension there - whether or not you're aware of it. It's like a stretching rubber band. Once you achieve your goal, the tension snaps, and all of a sudden you're celebrating and eating and find that you can't stop!

For women, there's also the issue of why they lost weight in the first place. Some do it just to lose weight, others do it because they think that people will like them now that they're skinny. When people continue to ignore them just as much as they did when they were obese, there's a bit of despair there, and the comfort food binges start again. (School kids, in particular girls, are very cruel to each other.)

Then there's the physical problem. For those individuals who have lost weight relatively rapidly, their bodies aren't happy with this weight loss, and their body metabolsim changes. When they start eating 'normally" again, their bodies actually work to regain all the weight they lost!

That's why it's necessary to be very carefully with weight maintenance eating. If you've lost weight gradually, it's a lot easier to just increase your portions by a little bit, and ensure that your body is happy with its new weight.