Lose It now!

I've been trying to lose weight on and off for a few years now. I've decided it's finally time to share some experiences since I've finally stumbled across some things that are actually working. I've lost about 10 pounds total since I started really trying to lose weight in late December 2010. Before that, it took me two years to lose 14 pounds.

LoseIt app

The big game changer for me has been the free app LoseIt! on my iPod Touch. It is also available on the iPhone and iPad of course plus there is a free website for those who don't want to give any money to Steve Jobs. The idea of the app is simple: if you burn more calories than you take in, you'll lose weight. So you enter your height, weight, age, gender and a few other pieces of info. Then you enter how much weight you want to lose - 1, 1.5, or 2 pounds a week. It gives you a "budget" of how many calories you can eat and still lose your target amount of weight.

Then start tracking what you eat & how much exercise you get. Getting a little close to red-lining - going over your calorie budget - do some cardio or go for a walk. You're 300 calories under? Go ahead and have a cookie or something yummy.

That's the power of this. It's not grapefruit and soup broth diet. You can eat ANYTHING you want as long as you stay under your calorie budget.

I got a big push to using LoseIt earlier this year. I checked the book out from the library and was reading it in a doctor's office. It turned out the doctor in his very busy work schedule was also taking care of 3 kids (two of them twins) and on top of that training for a triathlon. His method of tracking his fitness and nutrition was LoseIt. I figured if it works for him, it would work for me.

Motivation To Move nuggets

LoseIt definitely helped, but I still needed some motivation to get going. I started looking for health & fitness podcasts and stumbled across one called "Motivation To Move." It's a daily podcast with 9 minutes of motivational material and then 9 minutes of fitness info. There is something in every episode that helps out. I've found two VERY powerful concepts that have changed everything for me.

The first one is this... Before you do anything ask yourself

"How do I want to feel?"

Then think about your answer and does what you're about to do support that? Looking at a piece of cheesecake and ask the question. If the answer is "healthy and energetic!" pass on the cheesecake and have some fresh fruit. If the answer is "Like I just had something super-yummy and bad for me" and you really mean it, make sure it's what you want and then have the cheesecake.

The second thing is what Scott Smith (the creator of this podcast) calls

"The 12 Hour Diet."

Before you run off thinking Scott is a snake-oil salesman, listen to what the 12 hour diet is.

He has this theory that everyone can have the discipline to stick with anything for a limited amount of time. Apparently in the case of healthy eating, the limit is right around 12 hours. Anyone can have a healthy breakfast, lunch, and dinner. But get too far beyond dinner and you try to decide what to eat, you're going to be looking into the freeze and eating a bowl full of ice cream the size of your head.

So rather than risk eating junk as a midnight snack, set a cut-off and just don't eat after the cut-off. His suggestion for when to have the cut-off is 12 hours after you eat for the first time in the day. Eat breakfast at 7 AM? No snacks after 7 PM.

It's what works for YOU

In summary, I don't think any one of these things would give me the results I want. But combining the three and sticking with it really does seem to be working for me.