…is to eat less. 8)

Seriously.

The fact is that you need to take in less calories than you are burning. It doesn’t matter if it is carbs, fat or protein. It’s the overall calorie count that matters.

The trick is in finding out how many calories you are burning, and then eat less calories than that.

How can you do that? You need to determine your Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR). RMR is the number of calories you burn each day at rest, and it can account for a majority of your total caloric needs.

Better known as your metabolism. Remember? When you were 21, you could eat a Big Mac value meal and still fit into your skinny jeans. Fast metabolism. Now that you are older, you just look at a french fry and gain weight. :oops:

You can spend money (from $40-$100) on getting a test done to determine your RMR.

If you can’t afford the test, you can calculate your estimated RMR based on your current height, weight, gender and age. Other factors that affect RMR include body composition, your eating habits (small regular meals increase RMR, crash dieting decrease RMR), the weather, genetics…

If your calculated RMR is completely off-base, you will be able to determine that within the first two weeks of using it as your baseline.

How? If you are honest in logging your calories (EVERY BITE COUNTS), and eat less than you are supposed to be burning, but you don’t lose any weight in the first two weeks, then your RMR must be lower than you calculated.

If you are successful, there is one drawback. :-| As you lose weight, your RMR drops. So, if you were able to eat 2000 calories a day and lose the first 5-10 lbs, you then have to recalculate your RMR based on your new weight. And then you might have to eat 1700 calories a day to continue losing weight. And so on, until you get to your goal weight.

The good news is, after you get to your goal weight, you go into maintenance mode, and you can eat more! But, sensibly.

So, how do you keep track of calories? That’s a topic for another post…