Find Out What Works For You

People can diet effectively using a wide variety of different techniques/aids/styles. I am finding that this works for me:

1. Weigh myself every day when dieting and plot it on a graph, but even when I am not dieting this is a good idea so my weight doesn’t yo-yo.
2. keep a list of calories in the foods I have eaten each day and a running total. I use an Excel spreadsheet.
3. Measure the food I am going to eat. If I eat an apple, I measure the diameter so I can find out how many calories are in it. If I am going to have some nuts, I pour myself a 4th of a cup, which is about 160 calories.
4. Eat as many unprocessed foods as possible because it is easier to google for the number of calories in these foods.
5. If I can’t find how many calories are in a food, assign it a certain number of calories that would err on the side of more calories than it might have than less
6. If you are about to go out for dinner, try going to the restaurant website and see if it lists the calories in it dishes.

This does NOT work for my husband, who is finally dieting successfully after about 4 years of trying. He eats out every morning, and all he needs to do is be aware of how many calories are in foods that he eats. He used to stop every day on the way home from work and get a huge chocolate chip cookie at our local deli. Then I found that the extra large cookies similar to that have almost 700 calories, and the pumpkin muffin he was eating every morning from Dunkin Donuts has 650! Even the doughnuts at Dunkin Donuts have only 250 calories, so the muffins, which are enormous, are a BAD choice.

Find out what works for you! And remember, the first two weeks of a diet are the hardest, then you kind of get into the habit of not gorging yourself every day.