I have been following a reduced calorie diet for two months now. I have set my daily target of 1995 calories per day based on the Mifflin BMR calculation with an activity factor of 1.2 (mostly sedentary). After three weeks of a weight stall accompanied with decreasing waistline, my scale weight has begun to drop again. I have now lost a total of 29.4 pounds, over two thirds of which was in the first month. My waistline has shrunk by 2.5 inches and my hips by 3 inches. My "fat" clothes are not falling off of me yet but they are fitting much better than when I started this diet.
My wife is also following a reduced calorie diet but with a slightly smaller target calorie intake. She has lost 22.4 pounds so far. And, yesterday she wore a perfectly fitting dress to church that had previously been too small.
In the past, I had used low-carb diets effectively (lost 85 pounds) and now I am using reduced calorie effectively. As such, I am beginning the think that it doesn't much matter what method you choose to lose weight as long as you have the proper determination and persistence to stick with it.
Don't get me wrong though. Nobody is perfect. Living life to it's fullest means that you have to make room for special occasions and exceptions. One of these for my wife and I was a wonderful dinner at the Loveless Cafe in Nashville. Loveless, which has been featured on the food network many times, is world famous for it's biscuits and fried chicken. I'm pretty sure that they use lard in the biscuits and for frying and I'd hate to even take a guess at how many calories we consumed that night. Having one dinner there is not cheating. Exceptions are part of life. If I were to frame this as cheating then it would eat away at my will power. Instead, I choose to see it as one of life's rewards. It's simply a matter of maintaining balance. And, the fact that we have continued to lose weight despite a few such nights is evidence that we are indeed restoring balance.
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