If you use your weekly calorie total, and have high calorie days on weekends and counter that with lower calorie days at other times in the week, you will have no problems, and you will lose weight. How do I know ? well that is exactly what has worked for me.

As I am fond of saying, the diet and fitness industry love to try and make weight loss complicated and confusing, but it honestly isn’t. It is simple… not easy, but it is simple, we just have to eat less, and find a way of eating less that we find easy to do. In my case that is using intermittent fasting to give me those low calorie days.

Again I think stepping on the scales with a realistic goal in mind stops that feeling of depression if the scales don’t seem to have moved. If over say 4 weeks there is no change, ok, then in most cases we know the problem is we are still eating too many calories, but if month on month you are trending down, my advice is be happy !.

When you are losing actual body fat and not just fluid you will notice the difference in your clothes and in the mirror, not always with the scale, this is even more the case for Women than for us Men.. we do get off lightly with mother nature

I will qualify that by saying that, if I am honest, when the scales don’t move I still don’t like it, but I have done this long enough now that I know to look at the bigger picture, not what happens from one week to the next. Our lives are varied, perhaps you had a meal out the night before a weigh in, so the scales show a 3lb gain, what you need to remember is to gain 3lbs of fat, you would have had to consume around 10,500 extra calories above your BMR, so that 3lbs the scales are showing is going to be mainly water. Eat less for a day or two and you will soon see things come back in line. Trust me I know from over 14 months of living my life as a retired dieter there is just no way that in the last 14 months I have not gone to parties, visited restaurants or been out and from time to time, drank way more than I should. I still lost the weight, and I have continued to keep it off, I didn’t lock myself away for the last year or so, I continued to live my life, but with a couple of simple changes, and those are an understanding of how many calories I need, and then using Intermittent fasting as the tool to manage them.

So to summarise, my advice at the moment would be to use your weekly BMR calories as your calorie limit, and based on your daily activity see if your weight is dropping. If you feel comfortable reducing from you BMR, again this is up to you. anything below that number and you will lose body fat.

Keep me updated

Dave

LOL you know I would be the last person to say you need to cut the ice cream. That is like telling me to stop drinking beer, each to their own as they say.

If you want the ice cream most nights, then have it, but just be aware of how many calories it is. If you don’t mind missing it for an evening then it’s all good, but you don’t want to feel that you are missing out. That 10lbs shows you can lose weight and still have the ice cream

So you’re saying I really need to cut out that bowl of ice cream most nights? ARGH!!! You’re killing me man!

Just kidding.

But seriously, I think I’ll start losing weight faster by cutting back on calories as you’re talking about – it’s really just basic math I guess.

Still, feeling pretty happy about having lost nearly 10 lbs since Mexico one month ago!

What a timely post! I have lost 13.3 lbs since the end of Dec to now but stopped losing because I have not been minding how much I am eating. So now I am keeping a food journal to track what I am eating during my meal. My caloric intake is way too much and it explains why I have not continued. Great post! Thanks for the information.

I agree with you, The person in the tv show just highlights what we all do, and I am no different. I just find tracking my calories is a little easier if I didn’t eat anything !

You may be correct on the walking, though got the numbers from a study somewhere, but can’t find it now. Saying that, I did find Brad Pilon using the same numbers in this video here http://www.youtube.com/user/bradpilon#p/c/7A3167BDCAD74C6D/5/QH16huKwRHU .
I walk at fast past, as it takes me on average 1 hour five minutes, but from what i understand the calories burned does not change, if I ran the same distance I burn the same calories, I just do it quicker. I agree though, walking is a great way to unwind and clear the head.

first congratulations on losing 11lbs, nice going.

If I ate 1700 calories a day and just went from bed to laptop, and laptop to bed, then I would more or less stay the same weight. Of course most of us do a least something, but if I was not to do any exercise at all, then if I currently wanted to lose body fat just from my diet I would need to be at around 1200 calories a day, or 8,400 per week to lose 1lb of fat. Again a big mistake people make is thinking that eating 500 calories a day less will lose 1lb of fat, but that only works if it is 500 per day below your daily requirement.

I work on 12000 calories a week , but include a daily walk and of course my bodyweight exercises 2 or 3 times per week.

Hope that helps

Dave