Weight Loss

So, you want to lose weight.

Welcome to C-C, my friends, and let us instill upon you the guaranteed to work C-C Diet. No pills, no fad diets, no bull. Only real hard science.

This post is not meant to be the end-all be-all of how-to guides. There are alot of topics I skip over or touch briefly, that you should feel free to investigate yourself. I just want to equip you with the knowledge you need to make good decisions and lose weight properly.

Table Of Contents
Introduction
Chapter 0: Are you really overweight?

Chapter 1: The Mighty Calorie (Introduction to the Calorie)

Chapter 2: Nutrition In A Nutshell (Introduction to Nutrition)
     Section 2.1: Carbs Are Cool (Carbohydrates)
     Section 2.1.1: Functional Fiber (Dietary Fiber)
     Section 2.2: Powerful Proteins (Protein)
     Section 2.3: Fabulous Fats (Fat)
     Section 2.3.1: Confusing Cholesterol (Cholesterol and it's connections with Fats)
     Section 2.4: Water You Talking About? (Water)
     Section 2.5: So, How Much Should I Be Eating Then? (Percentages of Carbs, Protein and Fats)

Chapter 3: Movin' Right Along - Exercise and Weight Loss (Benefits of Physical Activity)
     Section 3.1: Sweatin' Off The Pounds - Aerobic Exercise
     Section 3.2: Flexibility Training (Flexibility)
     Section 3.3: Govehnoh Ahnold Sent Me... To PUMP YOU UP! (Weight Lifting)

Chapter 4: Putting It All Together - The Road To Fat Loss
     Section 4.1: Deficit Spending (Figuring out your Caloric Deficit)
     Section 4.2: Your Metabolism And You: A Love Story (Metabolism)
     Section 4.3: Apples vs. Pears: I think you're all a little fruity (Body Shapes)
     Section 4.4: Putting It All Together

Chapter 5: Last Pieces of Advice
      Section 5.1: Getting Over Overeating (Emotional Eating)
      Section 5.2: Be Your Own Doctor - Get Some Patience (Patience With Yourself)
      Section 5.3: Going For The Goal (Setting Goals and Rewards)

Chapter 6: Living With Your Lifestyle Change
     Section 6.1: A Man, A Plan, A Recipe Book, and a Pair of New Shoes! (Planning Out Your Lifestyle Change)
     Section 6.2: Eat To Live - How To Begin To Eat Healthy (Putting Nutrition Into Your Daily Routine)
     Section 6.3: I Think I Can, I Think I Can, I Think I Can (Adding Exercise Into Your Daily Routine)

Chapter 7: HELP ME!!! Common Problems Associated With Dieting
     Section 7.1: Me Vs. The Man In The Mirror (Self-Image)
     Section 7.2: Gimme Gimme Gimme Some Food After Midnight (Binging)
     Section 7.3: Killer Cravings (Cravings)
     Section 7.4: The Perils of Plateaus (Plateaus)
     Section 7.5: Eating Out (Dun Dun Dun) (Eating At Restaurants)
     Section 7.6: Crash And Burn - Why Repetition is NOT always Good (Burning Out)
     Section 7.7: Real Life Strikes Again! (Breaks And Vacations)

Chapter 8: Useful Links

Supplement 1: Stages of Dieting

Introduction: Why the other diets just don't work
So many of us have tried them all: Weight Watchers, Atkins, South Beach, none of them work. Some of them help you learn how to get the weight off, but the moment you stop, BANG!, you're back up again. Well, that sucks, doesn't it?
That's because the diet industry, all of it is, is designed to make sure that you, the average overweight American, don't succeed. After all, if you finally lose the weight and keep it off, than suddenly you don't need to keep buying their stuff. And they're out alot of money.

Here on C-C, though, we can teach you, from experience, how to lose weight, how to keep it off and we don't even charge!

Chapter 0: Are you really overweight?
Possibly an afterthought, especially on these boards when at least 90% of you are actually overweight, but... how do you determine if you're actually overweight?

There are stacks of Height-Weight diagrams and relationships trying to give you some idea of what is, realistically, an ideal weight. These are reasonable, but there are just so MANY of them. Which is right?

One nearly-universal measure to determine approximately how overweight you are is the Body Mass Index (BMI). Please feel free to use these site tools, or do a google search to determine your BMI.

In general, the latest suggestions I've seen suggests that if your BMI:

• is less than 15 (<15), than you need to see a doctor IMMEDIATELY.
  
• is less than 18.5 (<18.5), than you're underweight
  
• is greater than or equal to 18.5 but less than 25 (?18.5 but <25), than you're at an ideal weight
  
• is greater than or equal to 25 but less than 30 (?25 but <30), than you're overweight
  
• is greater than or equal to 30 but less than 40 (?30 but <40), than you're Obese
  
• is greater than or equal to 40 (?40), than you're morbidly obese
  

As a note, the BMI is a good measure for the average person, but if you're very muscular, than your BMI may suggest that you are overweight when you aren't.

One other way to determine if you are actually overweight is your fat percentage.

If you're a woman and your fat percentage is greater than 31%, then you are overweight. For men, if your fat percentage is greater than 24%, you are overweight.

To get your fat percentage measured accurately ask your doctor about calipers or underwater dunking. Don't trust the number your Tanita scale gives you. It's an estimate with a large range of error.

Chapter 1: The Mighty Calorie
The point of this post is to give you all the knowledge you need, in one little post, to get the weight off and keep it off.

And to begin with, we need to discuss the quote unquote enemy, the Calorie. It's not fair to call the Calorie your enemy, though, and I'll explain why.

The Calorie is a unit of biochemical energy, no more no less. The calorie is stored as biochemical energy inside of all of the food you eat. Your body retrieves this energy from the food you eat through a complicated process we will call "Digestion", and then uses it for all of it's needs. If any extra energy exists, your body then stores it inside of fat cells.
Everything you eat, from that apple to that slice of pizza contains calories in it.

Your food can be broken down into three sets of macronutrients: Carbohydrates, Protein and Fat. We'll explain these more below, but for now, understand the following:

Every gram of carbohydrate will release 4 calories
Every gram of protein will also release 4 caories.
Every gram of fat will release 9 calories.
And every gram of alcohol, for those of you who enjoy a drink, is 7 calories.

Got it?

Keep those number handy. They're important.

Now, these calories are important because they give you the energy you need, every day, to keep your body working. Everything your body does, from moving blood around your body, to breathing, to forcing your muscles to make you get up from your computer chair and walk over to that bathroom requires calories.

You can divide caloric output into two categories: What your body needs to run and what your body needs to make you actively DO things such as walk, run, skip, etc.

All of this will be explain below. I'm just laying the foundation.

The first law of Weight Loss is
Accumulation of Calories = Calorie Intake - Calorie Output.

Basically put, if you eat more calories than your body uses, you have an accumulation of calories, which will be tranferred into fat cells.
If you eat less calories than you body uses, your body will need to USE energy from it's energy stores. It does so by removing some of the energy from your fat cells (and reducing their size) and somewhat by burning off protein from your muscles.

Chapter 2: Nutrition in a Nutshell

Obviously, you're concerned with nutrition. Who isn't, after all? ;)

In all seriousness, one of the aims of many of us here on Calorie-Count isn't just losing weight, but also learning how to improve our health.  For those of you who want to learn to eat more healthfully, but don't understands the basics of it, this section is for you.

As a note, a lot of the information provided here is based on the FDA's current pyramid, and my own research.

In the last chapter, we discussed what a calorie was, and how many calories came from each macronutrient.

Let's discuss those macronutrients a little farther.

Section 2.1: Carbs are Cool
Carbohydrates primarily come from fresh fruits, vegetables, grains and anything containing sugar.

In general, the FDA suggests that you reduce your intake of processed carbohydrates.  The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends that you limit your daily intake of processed sugars in sweetened food and drink to no more than 10% of your daily calroic intake. Processing, such as the processes that turn whole oats into white bread robs the resultant product of much of the micronutrients that come with the original whole oats.

In general, the FDA suggests that you eat more fresh fruits and vegetables, and that at least half of your sources of grains come from whole grains (whole wheat breads, brown rice, etc.), and that you eat fewer sources of processed carbohydrates, sugars. The advantage of eating whole wheats over simple sugars is that they make you stay fuller longer, and that whole grains have higher concentrations of fiber in them.

The FDA suggests:
1) About 3-5 servings of vegetables a day, preferably with a wide variety of different vegetables of different colors. You're more likely to get a full set of micronutrients if you make sure to work in a large variety of different vegetables.
2) 2 servings of fruit, and:
3) 4-6 servings of grains, at least half of which are whole grains

I want to warn you, somewhere, about the potential issues surrounding many sugar substitutes. There are contreversies surrounding the healthfulness of most sugar substitutes, such as aspartame, splenda and high-fructose corn sugar. Use these at your own discretion, but make sure to understand that these sweeteners are not natural, in any way, and may have harmful side effects.

Section 2.1.1: Functional Fiber
I'll mention fiber when discussing carbohydrates. In general, most of the fiber you eat per day will come from whole foods such as whole grains, and fresh fruits and vegetables, the same foods you will get the bulk of your carbs from.  Dietary Fiber is undigestable to your body, and thus contains no calories.

There are two types of fiber: Soluble Fiber and Insoluble Fiber. In general, it's unimportant to concentrate on eating more soluble or insoluble fiber, though there are differences.. The benefits of fiber, though, is that they can help lower your cholesterol, can help keep you full longer, and can help make it easier for you to excrete your poop.

The ADA suggests that women attempt to get in about 25 grams of fiber, men, 35 grams.  These recommendations should change with age, but for many of us, getting 25 grams of fiber in your daily diet is a struggle already!

Section 2.2: Powerful Proteins
Oh Protein, how I love thee. Steaks and Burgers and Fried Chicken and.. hold on... these aren't all THAT healthful.

I won't say much about Protein. Protein is another macronutrient that your body needs to survive. You can get protein from lean cuts of meat, fish, eggs, seeds and nuts, beans and, of course, tofu.

There's a popular myth going around that people who want to build muscle need to consume a great deal of protein. This is just a myth. While it's true that you definitely do need protein to build muscles, you only need a reasonable amount.

The FDA suggests that you take in
1) 2-3 sources of dairy a day: Milk, Cheese, Yogurt, etc.
2) 5 - 6 oz. of lean meats a day (or meat substitutes such as beans, nuts and seeds)

Section 2.3: Fabulous Fats
Ah, fat, how I love thee. Just a little goes such a long way.

Most dieters don't realize this, but you actually need fat in your diet. There are some micronutrients, which your body can not produce, that are fat soluble, meaning that the only way to get them and to process them is by eating fat.

However, not every fat is created equal.

There are four sorts of fats: Saturated, Monounsaturated, Polyunsaturated, and Trans Fats.

Saturated Fats are generally fats that are solid at room temperature, such as butter, lard and the fat that you want to trim off your steak. These are not healthful fats. These are the fats that can harden your arteries and lead you to a coronary. A little of these fats is OK, but eat them sparingly! Most saturated fats come from animal sources: meat, milk, eggs, though some oils such as Palm Oil include saturated fat. Be sure to read the label to be sure that your oil is not saturated.

Unsaturated Fats - both Monounsaturated and Polyunsaturated are generally liquid at room temperature, such as canola oil and olive oil.  Both of these fats are more healthful fats. When eating fat, you'll want to eat more of these. Other sources of unsaturated fats include fish, nuts and seeds.

Transfats do not exist in nature. They are the product of modern science and these are the worst fats of all. Anything containing the words "Partially Hydrogenated" and Oil should be avoided as much as possible. That includes margarine and a lot of the fats you find in Potato Chips.

The FDA suggests you actually take in between 4 and 8 tsp of Oil a day, depending on how many calories you should be eating.

Section 2.3.1: Confusing Cholesterol

When discussing fats, we should probably discuss cholesterol. Like fat, some cholesterol is actually necessary for your health. Most of the cholesterol you need is actually created within your own liver from the raw material in the carbohydrates, proteins and fat you consume.

Cholesterol is delivered through your body via lipoproteins that move the cholesterol through your blood stream.  The type of lipoprotein carrying your cholesterol along will determine the eventual fate of the cholesterol it carries.

There are three types of lipoprotein, the carriers that carry cholesterol into your blood: High Density Lipoproteins (HDL), Low Density Lipoproteins (LDL) and, Very Low Density Lipoproteins (VLDL).

VLDL and LDL are considered "bad" because they are small enough to exit your blood vessels and deposit the cholesterol behind it, into your arteries and veins, creating blockages, which can trigger heart attacks and strokes.

HDL, on the other hand are big/thick enough that they can't exit your your blood stream, and exit your body, instead, through excretion. HDL may also "sweep up" left behind cholesterol. That's why HDL is considered "good cholesterol".

These are important to mention, because different fats can induce the creation of different lipoproteins.

Saturated fat will increase the concentration of LDLs.
Monounsaturated fat will increase the concentration of HDLs.
Polyunsaturated fat may decreate the concentration of both HDLs and LDLs
Transfats will increase the concentration of LDLs and also decrease the concentration of HDLs.

This is the mechanism by which a diet rich in saturated fat and trans fats may lead to heart attack or stroke, and why you should work to eat diets higher in monounsaturated fats and polyunsaturated fats, instead of saturated or trans fats.

The FDA recommends that you consume no more than 300 mg of cholesterol.

Section 2.4: Water You Talking About?
You can't discuss nutrition without delving into the wet and wonderful world of Water. Water water everywhere and most of us simply don't get enough to drink.

Simply put, your body needs water, and quite a bit of it. Your body needs it to do most of the things your body does: Construction of new cells and plasma, digestion, breathing, etc. Water acts as the interface for many of the biochemical reactions inside you.

The advantage of taking in water is, if you do not intake enough water, your body will hold onto what water it has received, so that it can continue to have the interface it needs for biochemical reactions. The surest way to make your body let this water go is.. to consume more water.

Estimates of how much you need depend greatly on how tall you are, how much you weigh, etc.  Approximately 20% of your water will come from the food you eat, however, to make sure that your body runs at full speed, make sure to take in at LEAST 64 oz. of water a day, more if you like.

It IS Possible to consume too much water. If you start drinking water and begin to feel queasy and ill, desist for a time until you feel better.  Luckily, however, you need to drink a lot of water in a very short amount of time to be truly drinking too much.  For most of us, though, drinking a lot of water will result in no more than a few more trips to the bathroom.

Section 2.5: So, how much should I be eating then?

Now that I've blown a lot of hot air at you, let me break it all down to you.

We'll discuss how many calories a day you should be eating further on, but to end this chapter, let's discuss percentages.

On average, the FDA guidelines add up to the following percentage breakdown:

A) 50% of your calories come from sources of carbohydrates, preferably whole foods such as fresh fruits, vegetables (preferable a wide variety of vegetables) and whole grains
B) 25% of your calories come from sources of protein, such as lean meat, fat-free milk, light yogurt, etc.
C) 25% of your calories come from fats, preferably monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats (oils, basically), and;
D) You are taking in at least 64 oz. of water a day.

Got it?

Section 3: Movin' Right Along - Exercise and Weight Loss

Most of us here at Calorie-Count aren't just looking to be thin, but to improve our health, and to improve our looks from overweight to thin, and athletic.

Exercise is a key factor in weight loss. While you can certainly lose weight without exercising, exercise not only helps you burn calories, it speeds up your metabolism.

We can break exercise up into three basic kinds: Aerobic, Stretching and Strength Training. All of these can help lead you from unfit to athletic and healthy. All have their place in the overall health plan.

Section 3.1: Sweatin' off the Pounds - Aerobic Exercise
Aerobic exercise is, without a doubt, one of the best ways to help you burn calories. Whether you jog, run, skip, dance, swim, play sports or just pull out one of your video tapes and work your body in time to a man (or woman) in tights, you're working your body, building up a sweat and burning off calories.

Aerobic Exercise is the best way to help increase your caloric deficit reasonably, and to increase your cardiovascular fitness, so that you can last longer at.. pretty much anything you like.

When you're first starting, it sure looks intimidating, reading about how some of your peers are jogging or running or dancing or.. whatever. Don't worry about it... just DO something. Whether it's as simple as going to the bathroom in the bathroom on the floor below you or taking out your iPod and walking around the block a little. Start somewhere.

In general, without involving heartbeats, a way to determine if you're working hard enough is the talk test. If you can do whatever you're doing and still sing at the top of your lungs, steps it up a notch. If, on the other hand, you're doing what you're doing and you can hardly say two words without gasping for breath, step it down.

The most important thing to do is to do like the Nike Ad tells you to do and just DO it.. whatever It you're interested in doing.

As a note, the FDA suggests that you get at least 30 minutes of moderate or vigorous activity a day, every day. The FDA suggests moderate activity includes walking brisky, hiking, weight lifting, playing golf, lawn work, bicycling less than 10 miles per hour. Anything where you're raising your heart beat, but it isn't necessarily near it's maximum threshold.

Vigorous activity includes running or jogging 5mph or more, swimming, heavy yard work (like chopping wood) and competitive sports. Activities where your heart beats are near to their threshold, for a time at least.

Section 3.2: Flexibility training
Flexibility training doesn't immediately benefit weight loss, though exercise IS exercise. Flexibility training can be as simple as making sure to stretch before you run, and as complicated as a 60 minute Pilates video.

In general, the advantages of Flexibility Training is Flexibility itself. It's the ability to bend over and touch your toes, or help twist your body into ways you may not have thought you could. It can help ease tension in your joints, and arthritis, or help prevent future joint-based illnesses.

Section 3.3: Govehnoh Ahnold Sent Me.. to PUMP YOU UP!
Weight training, perhaps surprisingly, DOES directly affect your ability to lose weight and maintain weight loss. Unlike fat, muscle is an active tissue. Every time you move your muscles, whether it's walking, lifting up a box, or typing on your computer, you burn calories. The more massive your muscles, the more calories you burn.

One other somewhat surprising advantage of weight training is that weight training actually helps counteract the effects of aging on your bones and may help to thicken your existing bones, helping to stave off Osteoperosis.

What that means, in a nutshell, is that the more muscles you have, the more calories you burn per day. That, in a nutshell, is the natural advantage men have over females when it comes to weightloss. At adolescence, men develop muscles, and the hormone testosterone, used to build muscles, become available.

There is a myth that toning your muscles will make women look bulky and masculine. This is a myth only. Based on the experience of a number of ladies on C-C, toning your muscles can increase their size somewhat, giving you a lean, athletic look.

One specific set of muscles to mention working on are abs.  The advantage of working out your abs, for both men and female is that strong abs actually reduces the visible size of your stomach. For those of you without strong abs, if you suck in your abs and look in your mirror, you see that your stomach size has reduced. Strengthening your abs actually acts to make it easier for your abs to be sucked in, thus reducing your stomach size visibly.

Chapter 4: Putting It All Together - The Road to Fat Loss

Section 4.1: Deficit Spending

Let's go back to Chapter 1, Shall we? In chapter 1, I introduced the first law of weight loss:

Accumulation of Calories = Calorie Intake - Calorie Output

Obviously, to lose weight, you want to be eating less than you burn a day, but how many calories less?

Doctors suggest that you eat between 500 and 1,000 calories less than you burn, however experience on calorie-count suggests you should actually try for a deficit of 500-750 calories a day. A 1,000 calorie a day deficit can both lead you to overexcercising or simply not eating enough. Remember, this is not a race. You aren't competing against anyone but yourself.

As you've no doubt heard, one pound of fat = 3500 calories. So, a loss of 500 calories a day equals to one pound of fat lost a week. Slow and steady and totally maintainable.

No doubt, though, you've seen the fallacy of the first law of weight loss. You can actually strive to eat 1,000 or 1,500 calories less than you spend, right? Then the weight will be pouring off! Actually, that's not correct, because if you eat far less than you burn, your body rebukes you and slows down your metabolism, which will be discussed later on.

It's suggested that there's a line.. that if women eat less than 1200 calories a day or men eat less than 1500 calories a day, then their body will slow their metabolism down and they'll be unable to lose weight. There is truth to this, but it's a little complicated. Basically, what it comes down to is that your organs uses a certain amount of calories simply to do their job. If you eat fewer calories than your body needs, your metabolism slows down to compensate and you head down a bad, bad road.

If you're interested in the effects of eating fewer calories than your body needs to survive, look into the effects of anorexia and "Starvation Mode".

Section 4.2: Your Metabolism And You: A Love Story

When discussing Weight Loss, we eventually need to dive into the mysterious world of metabolism.

In essence, a quick definition of metabolism is that it is the ability of your body to convert the food you eat into usable energy that its cells can use to do the things they do. It is one of those mysterious steps in that "Digestion" thing.

However, when dieters use the term metabolism, they're usually refering to the Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR), the number of calories your body would use if it did nothing but stay in bed for the next 24 hours.

There are a number of ways to estimate what your BMR is, and they are all estimates as your metabolism is individual to you and has as much to do with your height, percent muscle, weight, sex, and past eating habits as it does your lineage. At this point, if you're looking for an estimate of how many calories you burn per day, I would suggest everyone use the tools that come with this site, under Tools / Expenditure.

Metabolism can be changed, however I do want to warn against the use of diet pills. Those pills that DO work (Such as the drug Ephedra) are dangerous and can lead to long-lasting issues that will definitely interfere with your ability to live healthfully. Luckily, most pills DON'T work.

If you're looking to truly speed up your metabolism and increase your BMR, the healthiest and easiest way to do so are aerobic exercise and weight lifting. Depending on the intensity of your aerobic exercise, you speed up your body's metabolic rate for hours. As stated above, muscle burns more calories than fat, so the more muscle mass you have, the more calories you will naturally burn over the day.

On the other hand, if you eat fewer calories than your body needs to survive, your body will react by slowing your metabolism down, slowly, to match your intake. This effect is often mistakenly called "Starvation Mode" as it's your body reaction to your lower intake of food as if you were starving, but it's fairer just to call this a metabolism slowdown. Depending on how long your metabolism stays slowed down, and how low your calorie intake goes, your body will begin to react in bad ways (again: See Anorexia). If you decide to start eating enough calories again, your body will slowly raise your metabolism rate, and you will, for a time, gain weight.

Actually, I should mention that, as we age, our BMR does decrease. This is natural and can't really be helped. Exercise can help speed up our BMR still, and adding more muscle still helps.

One myth I want to pop is the myth that yo-yo dieting can screw up your metabolism. This is a myth. You can gain weight, lose weight, over and over, but unless you're losing weight by eating far fewer calories than you should be, you will not hurt your metabolism or BMR at all.

Section 4.3: Apples vs. Pears: I think you're all a little fruity

Are you an apple or a pear? Do you know? What body type you have will affect how you lose weight. You are a pear if your hips are larger than your waist (most women tend to be pears), and an apple if your waist line is larger than your hipline (most men are apples). There are advantages and disadvantages of both.

Several studies have shown that carrying excess weight around your waist (Apples) increases your chance of hypertension, type II diabetes and heart disease. The good thing, however, is that apples tend to lose fat around their upper body, lowering their chances of developing theses issues (and generally looking better where they didn't look so hot before)

There are no studies linking hypertension, diabetes or heart disease to carrying extra weight on your lower body, however studies show that Pears tend to actually lose weight around their upper body first, meaning your overall shape may not change much, but you'll carry around less weight.

Section 4.4: Putting It All Together

I've discussed some of the issues regarding weight loss. I've discussed making sure your deficit isn't too large, explained the metabolism and BMR and delved into how your body shape affects your weight loss and health.

But really, the question is.. how do you lose weight?

The answer's all up there.

To lose weight in a healthy and consistent manner, all you need to do is work on eating a reasonable caloric deficit. Count your calories, know what's going in your mouth and how much you burn. Be active, as much to enrich your health, as to burn extra calories so that you don't have to eat an unreasonably small amount, and work to build your muscles so that you can burn more calories.

A successful diet starts with the recognition that diets, in and of themselves, do not work. Diets concentrate on denying you food that you love to eat for some momentary weight loss, and doesn't teach you how to maintain that weight loss.

A successful diet is more of a slow lifestyle change. A slow giving up of unhealthful ways to learn how to eat what you need to live, and how to improve your health, as a whole. You need to learn to, as the expression goes "Eat to Live, not Live to Eat."

A successful diet does not concentrate on the negative, such as what foods you are no longer allowed to consume, but on the positives, about how you can better your life and your health. A successful diet is a true lifestyle change towards fitness and health.

One myth that I'd like to discuss, is the myth of spot reducing. That there's some exercise or stretch that will allow you to lose weight on some part or portion of your body. This is just a myth. You eat less calories and exercise and your body decides, for itself, where the fat is shrunk. Working on toning specfic areas of the body will help tone those muscles and may help lift your body so that you look, in total, better, but won't necessarily force your body to lose fat there.

Chapter 5: Last Pieces of Advice

Section 5.1: Getting over overeating
Very often, you'll find that you've had a crummy day. Your boss yelled at you, your dog left you a surprise when you got home, and you just stubbed your toe. Before you know it, you've just downed a pint of Ben and Jerry's Phish Phood and are looking sorely at the bag of Hershey's Kisses.

STOP! And let's back up a little.

There are all sorts of complex emotions wrapped up with eating. Often, how we feel affects how we eat. A lot of people tend to eat when they're miserable or when they're bored.

When starting off your new lifestyle change, grab a piece of paper and start writing down how you feel when you eat certain foods. Are you cheerful? Angry? Bored? Achy? Bleh? See if there are any connections. If you find that you tend to overeat when you're achy and bleh, than you're probably an emotional eater. Being aware of a problem can often lead to a solution.

The next time you feel the emotions that lead to bad eating habits, try to be aware of them a little. Recognize "I feel crummy and I want something sweet to eat." Then try to deal with the emotion without overeating. Call up a friend, put on your favorite music, go out for a walk, anything but sitting in the kitchen with a box of Oreos feeling bad about your day and feeling worse about how you're eating.

If you feel like you have a bigger issue, such as full blown depression, please contact a counselor to help you deal with that. Often, creating one positive change in your life can lead to other positive changes and even more positive changes, a veritable Domino Effect of positivity.

Section 5.2: Be Your Own Doctor - Get Some Patience
One of the first things you need to keep in mind when it comes to lifestyle changes and learning how to live healthily is that, for many of us, we have years and years of bad experiences and bad habits that we want to change, and every so often, we find ourselves feeding back into the cycle of negativity. Perhaps you've had a crummy day and just binged on Ho-Hos.

The first rule of weight loss (unlike the first LAW of weight loss above) is: Be Patient with yourself. For most of us, it took us months or years to get in the sad shape we're in now. A long history of bad choices and bad eating. You CAN fix that, you can go from someone who's made bad choices to someone who's made good choices, but it takes time to do it.

The general rule I've heard is that it takes 21 days of doing something for it to become a new habit. Often, from experience, if you can even get past the first week, you've overcome the biggest obstacle.

Should you find that you've fallen into old habits, then instead of feeling like you've failed, which you haven't, stop, and get yourself back on the habit. Just recognize the mistakes you've made, try to learn from them, and then go back to trying to do the very best you can. Also, remember, that it takes 3,500 calories to make a pound of fat. Unless you've downed an extra 3,500 calories more than you burned, than any fluctuations in your scale is probably due to other things such as the amount of water in you, and is not indicative of your having just gained fat.

Just as you need to learn patience as you struggle to make new habits for yourself, you need to have patience in how fast the weight leaves you. When you first start, you often lose a couple to a few pounds immediately, which is probably extra water leaving your system. From there, you may lose a comfortable 1-2 lbs. a week, possibly more. For reasons I can not fully explain to you, very overweight people and men can typically lose more than 1-2 lbs. a week in a healthful manner. As you get closer and closer to goal, though, your weight loss slows up and you find that maybe you can no longer lose a pound or two a week, but maybe three quarters of a pound or half a pound. Some weeks, you simply don't seem to lose weight at all.

I'll be discussing goals in the next section, but it needs to be said here that there will be weeks when you simply don't seem to lose weight at all, or even when you seem to put on weight. It is important that you have patience with yourself and faith in your ability to be doing the right things. If you're doing the right things, the weight will come back off and you'll be headed back in the right direction, towards your goal weight.