You and I know that losing fat and staying in
great shape is a difficult task because it is so hard to stay motivated and it
is so tempting to cheat, especially when you can hide the cheating. We dieters
have all been in a starving situation when dieting and our mind reasons very
quickly why that extra piece of pie is not going to hurt us. We take it, forget
about it and then wonder next day why we didn’t lose weight.
For most of us dieting is a constant battle
between emotion and reason and when hungry, reason is out of the window and
emotion just wins. We do not see the immediate effects of our behavior and
therefore our brain is fooled into thinking that everything is all right. On
the other hand, let’s say you would get very sick when eating more than you
need, overeating would stop very quickly.
Getting sick after a little bit of overeating
does normally not happen therefore we need to find a different way to show the
consequences of our behavior. We need to show this in a factual manner, an
immediate visual display of the results of our cheating. It is not punishment
right away, but over time our brain will be conditioned such that taking an
extra piece of pie will give negative weight loss results. Then we will start
to understand why we don’t lose weight and can pinpoint the causes.
What should this visual display look like? First I like charts, they are very easy to
understand and can show trends and correlations between variables. In this
chart I would like to see over a period of time, the average calories that I
take in per day compared with the average calories that I burn per day. If the
chart shows that the intake calories are lower than the burned calories, I will
lose weight and vice versa I will gain weight. Correlate that with a chart that
shows your weight or BMI (Body Mass Index) over time and I have the tool that
helps me regulate my food consumption versus my daily activities.
If I add my hunger levels before and after the
meals, I can fine tune my meal plans and daily activities. In this way I can
sustain my dieting for a long time and preferably it will become my way of
life. I have minimized the hunger pain and increase the pleasure of losing
weight and feeling more attractive.
There is abundance of free online food calorie calculators.
These calorie counters just display nutrition facts and are not going to help
you lose weight. Nor is a simple calorie calculator that tries to calculate
your calories burned solely based on your weight and average activity level.
These are simple little gimmicks that are a waste of your time.
Only when you seriously can track and correlate
your calorie intake and calories burned over time, depending on your age,
weight, gender, height and individual activity intensity levels can you
precisely measure your calorie balance. Seeing visually that your weight loss
program works is a big motivator to stay on track. Also you can see immediately
when you are off track and you can adjust your situation accordingly.
Acquiring great health is a complex task.
Interrelating factors like diet, nutritional facts, meal plans, calorie
balance, body reading measurements, supplement and medicine intake, exercise
routines, daily activity intensity and costs will make it very difficult for
you to see the forest for the trees.
Well designed software that keeps track of all of
the above factors and can correlate them will make it very easy to manage your
health, fitness, weight loss, muscle mass gain or any goal you have set...
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