Average Joe Story Part 2: The First Steps To Reach That One Goal (Diet).

My main goal at the time was to get under two hundred pounds.  I hadn't been below two hundred pounds since high school as far as I can remember.  I had forty pounds to lose and in order to lose it safely and healthily I planned on losing one pound a week.  Losing one pound a week is generally the healthiest amount to lose in order to keep the body from going into different starvation or defense modes that can happen with rapid weight loss.  It is also the general accepted amount that if lost at a pound a week that people are more likely to keep that weight off.

After years of attempting to lose weight and failing many times I decided to take it slow.  I knew that it I started with to much to quickly that the motivation would die out and I would fall off the bandwagon once again.  So at the time I made the choice to start with diet first. 

Starting with the diet first would mean a few things.  I downloaded the phone application I had used in the past My Fitness Pal (http://www.myfitnesspal.com/).  This application is great at tracking calories.  It will do a basic calculation on how many calories you should be eating and make it easy to put all your food in.  It also has a recent function as if you eat the same foods a lot you can just quickly reselect them. 

I went out and bought a decent digital food scale.  All packages now a days have a weight and other measurement like cups or something.  I always found that the weight is more accurate then in a measuring cup.  If weighing got me more food then I would weigh on a scale rather than measure.

The final thing I did was I told my wife, sister and parents about the fact I was going to start this.  It was my way of having people to keep me accountable for my actions.

After the first week of dieting I did the math and realized that in order to reach my goal weight by losing the afore mentioned one pound a week that it would take the better part of a year to lose the weight.  It seemed so far away. 


That was when I read an article on My Fitness Pal about setting up smaller non weight related goals in order to make that main goal so much easier to reach.  So I did just that I made a few smaller goals in order to be able to check things off of a mental list to make the main goal seem not so far.

It started so simple yet oddly satisfying.  I started with count calories every meal for a day, then every day for a week and then every day for two weeks.  Then the goals got larger, but still easily attainable.  Count calories every day for a month and then two months.  Suddenly it had become habit to weigh my food and count calories.  With the first step done it was time to start the other half of the weight loss equation.