I have been struggling with my weight for so long, I have forgotten when it all began. Spending hours researching, how I should be losing weight so thought I would pass along the knowledge. I have come to realize that a lot of people don’t know how to lose weight. So thought, I would give a bit of a quick overview of where to start.

When To Lose Weight

I know, a lot of you who have googled “How To Lose Weight” might not be over weight but are looking to lose 5 -10lbs more. Could you do me a favor? Look in the mirror… really look at yourself. Smile back and tell yourself: “I am beautiful”.

We are all beautiful, no matter what body we have.

If you are overweight, obese or extremely obese, it is very likely you should lose weight. First and foremost, go to your doctor, to ensure s/he agrees with your assessment and get a doctor to support your efforts. This is, also, to ensure you don’t have any underlying issues you need to take into consideration before starting.

I am not a doctor, nutritionist or weight loss specialist. I am simply someone who has lost 70 lbs herself, and have 30 lbs to go. Honestly, I still learn something new every day.

Where To Start

You technically, already, started. You started by googling “How To Lose Weight”. Now you need to understand the basics: Where are you currently and where should you be heading. For some of you, the now to where you should be headed might be far away. It can be scary and a bit disheartening to see the distance. What I want to say to all of you, before you even embark on this journey, don’t be scared. You will feel like you fail many times but as long as you keep getting back up, you are winning.

Losing weight is a mind set change and lifestyle change but that doesn’t mean you can’t have your dessert… So keep reading and learn the basics so you can start your own weight loss adventure.

BMI

You will and have already heard the term BMI. It is not a final definition, but it is a good rule of thumb to figure out where you are starting.

“Body Mass Index (BMI) is a person’s weight in kilograms divided by the square of height in meters. A high BMI can be an indicator of high body fatness. BMI can be used to screen for weight categories that may lead to health problems but it is not diagnostic of the body fatness or health of an individual.”

CDC

I use a BMI calculator online as it is a much easier way to both calculate your BMI and to understand which category you fall within. Check out the calculator I use here.

Have you calculated your BMI?

Now you want to understand where you are going. I used the below chart to estimate what is considered “healthy”.

Now find your height on the left hand side and move your sight horizontally across towards the right. Anything in the green is considered a healthy weight. As an example, I am 5 Feet 5 Inch (165 CM for those of you that are European). I, now, move across and see the numbers 19-24 that are in green. These are the BMI number that tells me if I am “healthy”. Now look up to see what the weight is. For me it is between 115lbs and 149lbs.

What are yourhealthy BMI numbers?

So How Do you Lose Weight?

Now that you understand where you are and where you are going, you need to actually start the work. You need to lose weight. To lose weight you need to be in a calorie deficit.

You might be wondering what a calorie deficit means. How you can find out what a calorie deficit is to you. I got ya’…

A calorie deficit means that you eat less in a day than what your body needs to maintain its weight.

To find out what your calorie deficit you have two options. You can either ask your doctor or you can use this calculator that I use here.

Best tip is to be as honest as possible. This will give you the best results.

This calculator is something you want to keep handy. You will will need to use it regularly as you lose the weight. The smaller you get, the less your body needs to keep you going. Therefore, you will be burning less compared to when you were bigger.

To give you an example. When I started, I was 246lbs and at 5 feel and 5 inches. 37 years of age, and I did not exercise regularly so added in “sedentary” to my calculations. When I started my maintaining calorie intake needed to be 2,162 Calories. Now if I added in my new weight, keeping the rest of the metrics the same, I will need to only eat 1,797 calories to maintain my weight.

Calories

You now know where you are, where you are headed and how many calories you need to eat to lose weight. Now what?

Now you need to understand how you can most easily calculate your daily caloric intake. Googling and reading all of the nutritional information of all ingredients you are using in a day and adding together the numbers manually is too much. I use an app to help me out. There are many different apps out there. Simply go to your app store and search for “calorie counter” and you will get countless options.

My favorite app is MyFitnessPal. It gives you the basics for free. The basics are all you need, unless you start getting into the details of what you are eating.

You can scan your foods, search for them easily and even create your won recipes. It will take about a month to get up and running. You need to get used to the app and adding your recipes take a bit of work. Once the majority is in there, it will be very easy to use.

My favorite feature is that you can set your calorie intake. This means, you decide how you want to kick off your journey or even change it as you lose the weight.

Now what?

You now have the basics you need to get going.

There is more knowledge, I can pass along but I don’t want to overwhelm you. I will continue to write blog posts to build on this one. To give you more information, teach you about macros and micros. How these play a role in weight loss and your overall health. Teach you about exercise and how that fits into a weight loss journey.. or not.

Being overwhelmed from the get go can be discouraging so I will end the blog post now. Once you are ready, I am sure I will have more posts up that will give you more details. Details you might need, as you get more and more excited about your new life.

I would love to hear from you and how your journey is going. Do you need more information Was something not particularly helpful? I want to pass along my knowledge and pay it forward.