Losing Weight Without Dieting

Okay, so I always said that I would never, never count calories. As long as I was exercising regularly, I allowed myself to eat pretty much whatever I wanted. Because I ran a lot and lifted weights for many, many years, this worked for me, although I have always been a junk food junkie.

By nature, I am not skinny nor do I come from a skinny family. Quite the opposite. But I love the outdoors and being active. That is still the case, but about 6 months ago, I totally lost my mojo to go to the gym.

I am coming up on 40 and I was finding that I just wasn't satisfied with the gym anymore. I was working hard, but I kept gaining weight. A pound here or there until I was about 15 pounds over weight. It didn't make sense to me. I worked out 3-5 times a week which included 45 minutes of treadmill or outside running and another 45 minutes of weight training. I had muscle and endurance, but my gut was expanding.

For years, I refused to diet or count calories because if I needed to drop a few pounds, I'd just work out harder and it seemed to work. Dropping weight for me was never easy, but I could do it and it worked. Until about 6 months ago.  The harder I worked, I swear, the more weight I gained. And we're not talking muscle weight, I know the difference. First my pants got tighter, then I started seeing a few dimples around my thighs (something I'd never seen on myself before). What was going on?! Everything was the same; I was exercising as normal and eating the same foods.  Then I started getting depressed because I was getting fat. The more depressed I got, the less and less I went to the gym, until I stopped going altogether about 4 months ago.

Now my weight has leveled off and I don't seem to be gaining any more, but I'm now 20 pounds over weight. What can I do, I thought? Then I had a breakthrough. While I was exercising as usual and eating the same things (a mix of good stuff and high fat foods), my almost 40-year old body has been changing. I'm just not metabolizing the fattening foods as I could when I was younger. DUH!

I'm not going to try diets because, frankly, the national ones are expensive and I don't have the money to pay for the special food.  I think that other diets make you cut out certain food like carbs or sugars, which makes you crave them even more. So what to do, what to do? I don't want a short-term weight loss, I want something that I can use going forward that will take into consideration my aging body, but will allow me to eat the same foods I have always enjoyed, those high in carbs.

The answer for me is so simple that I kick myself for refusing to look into years ago. It's called counting calories. Most diets, no matter what they want you to do, involve keeping a food journal. I always thought of a food journal as a spiral-bound notebook you had to carry around with you and look at packages in the store and calculate a bunch of numbers in order to determine if you could eat the food. No thank you!

Well, thank goodness for technology because counting calories has come a long way. I downloaded a free (only for the first 6 months) iPhone application called LoseIt! I am amazed at what this thing does. It helps you set up a daily calorie intake limit based on your current weight and your weight goals. Throughout the day, you either add in the foods you are eating (if they aren't in the list of options) or pick from lists of grocery store and restaurant foods or foods you've already used before. You also get to deduct calories for exercise you do throughout the day from walking your dogs to painting to weight lifting.

Look, this is not some miracle program that melts the fat for you; you still have to exercise. I think the biggest thing I have gotten from this application is a real awareness of the amount of calories of the things I'm putting in my mouth. With a target daily calorie limit of between 1600-1700 calories, 3 pieces of my favorite DiGiorno pizza pack over 1000 calories. No wonder I wasn't losing any weight when I was exercising! I really think twice about eating something when I can check the amount of calories it has and how many calories I've racked up all day, seriously with the touch of a few buttons.

Yes, I am still eating the foods that I have always eaten. I am just cutting back a little to stay within my budget. I am a competitive person, so staying within my daily allotment is a challenge to me. In a 7-day period, I went over slightly (just slightly) 3 times, but was well under 4 times. I can live with that. I have lost 1.5 lbs in the first week without much effort on my part. I'm interested to see what happens once I get back into the gym. And honestly, I'm not hungry. I'm still eating enough to stay full, just not quite as much as before. And I'm not craving or obsessing about foods because I haven't cut anything out of my diet.

It's all about that term "moderation" that gets thrown around a lot. In my case, I'm eating more in moderation, but I don't think I'm eating in moderation. My LoseIt! application shocks me enough  with the calorie counts for me to not focus on that scary word. I recommend trying this simple it's ridiculous method of weight loss. It costs nothing. What do you have to lose, other than weight?