?Eat less, Move more.?

Actually, I’m not eating that much less than I was before, I’m just eating differently. I’m cooking with less oil, eating less cheese, making sure to have my most calorie-packed meals for breakfast, eating more fish and less red meat, learning to make tofu edible, etc. Additionally, I’m rationing out my calories a bit so I can, say, have a piece of candy if I make sure to offset the calories by eating a healthier meal or eating a light breakfast and lunch if I have plans to go out to dinner with friends.

I had two slightly contradictory mantras that I repeated to myself throughout this process :

“It’s a lifestyle change, not a diet” In other words, it’s not enough to simply eat healthier for a few months and then go back to eating shit and never moving. I hit my goal weight 2-3 weeks ago, but I haven’t gone back to eating Taco Bell and skipping the gym. If you’re not willing to make changes to the way you live in order to get the goal you want, don’t bother.

“Don’t make any promises to yourself that you can’t keep” It would have been easy for me to say that I’d become a vegan and start going to the gym every day, but that wouldn’t make me happy and I wouldn’t stick with it. I don’t obsessively count my calories, use an excel spreadsheet to chart my progress at the gym, or eat nothing but salads and tofu burgers. Instead, I found a comfort level and stuck with it. It’s better to stick with a half-assed exercise and diet program than give up on a good one after a month or so.

So yeah, in a sense I’m eating less and moving more, but you’ve gotta make sure to do it the right way or you’re just gonna get stuck in an endless weight gain/loss cycle.

You’ve stumbled upon the oldest, most successful, and healthiest weight reducing diet ever. It has the added benefit of being the simplest.

?Eat less, Move more.?

1. If I’m not hungry, I don’t eat. I found myself eating dinner because it was dinnertime, not because I was hungry. So if I’m hungry at dinnertime, I eat. If I’m not, I don’t.

2. When I eat, I eat food. I won’t even claim it’s the best food. Sure, a cheeseburger is a good source of fat — but also protein, iron, calcium. Cheetos, on the other hand, are just calories, preservatives, and food coloring. If I want to snack on something crunchy, I go with Wheat Chex, or Cornflakes, or Special K.

Worked pretty well, until November 3, 2004. Since then, I don’t see much reason to not eat a lot of bacon…