1. You have a much better chance of doing some moderate activity if you get off the couch.
2. You are not subject to the very bad ads for junk food that get into your head and make you crave junk food.
3. You can’t be watching TV and snacking if you are not watching TV.
4. People who watch 2 or more hours of TV per day eat 7% more calories, which is certainly enough for a steady weight gain.
5. If you are going to be sedentary, dive into a great book instead, it is good for your brain.

Write down everything you put in your mouth. Don’t just reach for the chips and starting munching, look at the package and check the calorie content. I am looking at a bag of taco chips right now, it says one serving is 6 chips and has 150 calories. That is 25 calories per chip. Have you ever realized that one taco chip has so many calories? I was shocked. Grab the number of chips you want to eat, and close the bag before you take any more.

You could keep track of what you eat and the number of calories on an excel spreadsheet, or the website mentioned above allows you to create an account and keep your journal there. http://www.fitday.com/webfit/index.html. Some of the time you will have to estimate the number of calories because you have no idea how much meat you were served somewhere, or the number of ounces in the potato salad at the company picnic. When in doubt, I assign the unknowns 300 calories, which is probably an overestimate, but overestimating is better than underestimating.

The main reason to do this is to just be aware of what you are doing. Chili’s restaurant now has a lower calorie menu and lists the number of calories in each dish. That is a great start, maybe more restaurants will follow suit.

You can also enter in how much exercise you get on average in a day, but this is optional. If you go out and walk 4 days a week at lunch for 15 minutes, then you walk an hour a week, divided by 7, for 7 days in a week, then you average 8 – 9 minutes per day.

The point of doing this is to determine how to restrict your calories so you can lose weight. To lose a pound, you need to cut 3500 calories from your diet over a period of time. If you want to lose 1 pound per week, which is safer than trying to lose a lot every day, you would have to cut 500 calories each day. You don’t have to starve yourself! In fact, if you diet by starving yourself, your body starts to cut down on the number of calories it needs to survive and so eventually, you eat nothing, and you still don’t lose weight, which is unbelievably frustrating!

You CAN do it!!!

Why don’t we think of this food, and the food companies that deliver these ads as the enemy! Think about how the company just wants your money, and because you give in to that, you gain weight while they get rich. Don’t give them your money. NO MORE JUNK!

So here is the tip! When you get the urge to eat, from boredom or stress or lack of sleep, which apparently is a big contributor to weight gain, the feeling will pass if you let it. Just ignore the urge for a while, until it passes. You can wait for the next meal. I know you can! I have to get back to work……. and I am not going to eat! Writing about it helps too.

The researchers hope we can start a NEAT revolution, to halt obesity.  “This is entirely doable, because the kind of activity we are talking about does not require special or large spaces, unusual training regimens or gear. Unlike running a marathon, NEAT is within the reach of everyone,” Dr. Levine says. Here is the link to the full article: http://www.mayoclinic.org/news2005-rst/2630.html
So, as I mentioned in another post, get out of your chair and WIGGLE AND SHAKE your body. You CAN do it!