A woman's body uses 1,200 calories a day in JUST BEING. That translates into getting up in the morning, doing just about nothing & then going to bed at night.

Men use up 1,500 calories JUST BEING. That also translates into getting up in the morning, doing just about nothing & then going to bed at night. {Sorry Ladies}.

Pregnant women, athletes & children use a bit more energy each day; ask your doctor for details.

Forget most diets, diet plans & ideas.
You know; those diet plans that take off weight with restrictions & spot reducing products that make you sweat & pay....& pay... Why spend the extra money?

EAT WHAT YOU LIKE.

Just remember Four things.

1. If you eat what you need to burn your basic calories,
2. Eat no more than 30% fat per day & you MUST drink at least 8
  8 ounce glasses of water or "stuff" with water in it.
3. Exercise for just 30-60 minutes per day, up to 6 days a week...
4. Break a Sweat but be able to talk while you are exercising...

You will lose weight.
No Jokes, No restrictions, No failures.

Here is the best part of this lifestyle change which frees you from guilt & failure:

If You have a day where you must eat out or something comes up that you go over the calorie intake for the day...there IS another day. It follows the last day & another comes after it. If you cannot for one reason or another; stay on your plan for caloric & fat intake for a day; work on planning out the next day & the next.

Weight management counselors suggest that you really CAN plan out & budget your eating & meals for a week at a time & simply either budget in those "going out" times or know that if you watch what it is that you are putting into your mouth; you can reduce the damage that comes from the "impromptu" meal that came your way in the middle of your planned events.

Weight Management counselors also suggest that you eat more than the standard "three meals a day" routine. This allowance to snack still means that you must watch your intake of both calories & fat, but gives you the opportunity to always feel full & not hungry. Indeed, this particular plan can get to the point where you are NOT hungry but will still need to eat to make the basic allowances in fat & calories.

This also means that you can change the way that you eat to match the type of body that you want. Obviously, if you are working out*; you will want to add about 200 calories to your intake to cover the energy consumed by the **weights or circuit** work-out. *This doesn't cover the regular 30 minutes of exercise that you need to put into your schedule every day...this would mean the type of weight training that comes in a supervised gym. The fat intake will remain the same even if the caloric intake comes up an extra 200 calories.

What is the caloric intake that we are talking about here?

For Women: If you want to reduce weight; eat between 1,200 & 1,500 calories a day.
For Guys: Eat between 1,500 & 1,900 per day to lose weight AND WATCH YOUR FAT INTAKE. It is amazing to watch what one guy can put in his mouth & think that he is "dieting".

You will probably need a transportable calorie/fat counter book of some sort. {We found reasonably reliable ones in dollar stores.}
You should be able to find at least two "pocket sized" books that will somewhat agree to the calorie count & fat content of both regular cooked & raw foods, beverages & snacks as well as name brand prepared foods & popular restaurants' offerings.

You will be appalled at the amounts of sodium & sugar that are found in "low-fat" items. These figures drive up both your sugar & therefore caloric intake as well as your ability to retain water.

There is one other catch to this....
You need to record what you eat per day for at least a month.

You should keep a log:

Mark down the serving size & the amount of calories & fat in each serving. You will probably do well to use one of those hardcover lined paper books that you can buy in a WalMart® or KMart®. Just turn it on its side & draw lines to make boxes for time, what you ate, calories, serving size, fat grams, a column for % of fat & a comment column to put notes in....I will try to put a form on the page at a later date.

READ THE LABELS

on everything that you eat before you buy it in the store. This may add a few minutes to your grocery shopping but in the long run you will train yourself to do it & it will help you to understand where the fat, salt, sugar & calories are coming from within your current eating habits.

FIGURING THE FAT

There is a way to figure out how much fat that you are taking in percentage % per day. It is a simple formulae that you should write down on the bottom of your log sheets & you can use the formula to figure out just how much of a percentage of fat you've eaten per meal, after two meals or after the end of the day. Also make sure to have the formula on your refrigerator door for good measure...

This is the formula:

Just take the total amount of fat grams that you have consumed & multiply them by the number 9.0.= A
Then:

Take A & divide that number by the total amount of calories that you have consumed. This will give you a .123whatever number that will be the % of fat that you have eaten/drunk or consumed for that meal...

For example:

I ate a breakfast that consisted of a Slimfast & a breakfast fruit pastry. I ate a total of 466 calories & the two products had a total of 11 grams of fat. {5 grams in the bar}.
If I follow the formula: 11 x 9.0= 99
99 divided by 466.= 21% fat for my morning meal.... That may seem high, but the more calories that I consume up to my total of 1,200 for the day & still watch my fat intake; my percentage number will come down even further.

Okay, for lunch: I had a serving of my favorite Health Valley Blueberry Rice granola bar, with a glass of 2% milk, and a serving size slice of my homemade low fat lasagna. Remember; the clue here is to read the labels before you start buying these things....

The Fruit Bar has: 140 calories & 0 grams of fat in one bar.
The milk has: 130 calories & 5 grams of fat in 8 ounces. {Milkfat will vary with bottler}
The lasagna works out to have: 363 calories & 6 grams of fat {lowfat cottage cheese & part skim & fewer eggs work to control these numbers as well as knowing what makes a portion}

Total Calories for lunch: 633
Total fat for lunch: 12 grams of fat x 9.0= 108 &
108 divided by 633 = 17% fat

Okay: lets take this one step further: I've eaten two meals.
The total calorie intake for the two meals is: 1,099
The total fat intake for the two meals is: 23 grams
The formula is 23 grams multiplied by 9.0 = 207
207 divided by 1,099 calories = 18% fat

Now I am low on fat intake but very close to my total calories for the day. I can eat lots of salads & other "free" foods that don't add a great deal of calories but that might have some more fat in them. Or I can go a little over on my calorie intake if I take my normal 2-5 mile walk sometime today; say to 1,300 calories which with what I've eaten so far. I don't want to push the calorie number too high or I will lose the goal of losing the weight; I will just maintain where I am.

IF you watch what you eat, you will be surprised at the difficulty sometimes of actually getting the under 30% & NO LESS than 20% fat into your diet on a daily basis.

WHY DO YOU NEED FAT IN YOUR DIET?

It would seem to most of us, that if fat intake is the culprit behind gaining weight, that we should just go on a NOFAT diet. This would be fine, except that humans & most mammals NEED some fat in their diets to maintain several rather important parts of their body. The most visible of these is your skin & your hair.

WHY LEAVING FAT OUT OF YOUR DIET
"AIN'T" A GOOD THING:

Leaving fat out of your diet: below the 20% mark, tends to show first in dry skin & then in hair that first needs stronger & stronger conditioners, & then will start to break off. Your webmistress went through this in 1994 when she lost the bottom third of her red hair to the mineral whirlpool at the spa in Reston, VA.

The culprit? 3% fat intake per day & very few natural supplements dealing directly with the hair, skin & nails beyond a calcium tablet to augment my change in milk intake. {From 2% to Skim} { just to let you know; this webmistress uses Slimfast® as a meal anyway}.

THE SOLUTION {At Least for Me}:

The webmistress learned that you need to feed both the body & the hair, skin & TEETH; the right types of food or supplement your food so that the body doesn't suffer more loss than just the fat that you are looking to lose.
The WebMistress did that with a combination of supplements & turning to a partial vegetarian diet augmented with the Slimfast®; especially while she was doing the circuit training...instead of those expensive "powders".....

HERBAL & MINERAL SUPPLEMENTS:

Some of the other nifty things that I found out had to do with taking combinations of herbal supplements at certain times of the day...

Vitamin C

Dr. Linus Pauling came out with a study over 30 years ago; dealing with the body's absorption of Vitamin C {ascorbic acid or acerola cherry extracts}. He showed that taking measured doses of Vitamin C {one of the water soluable vitamins} in strengths of at least 1,000mg at least three times a day or 2,000mg twice a day..showed benficial results to the nervous & digestive systems, the skin, & aided in most of the senses....
Mr. Pauling's books go on about the times to take these supplements & what the absorption rate really is for most supplements. Much study suggests that only 20-50% of any supplement is actually absorbed by your body in the course of utilizing what is processed in your digestive tract.
The Vitamin C regimen that I use; is to take 2,000mg or two 1,000mg pills in the morning with my drink {usually Slimfast with iced Coffee or Cranberry, grape & apple juice **} on the way to work & then to take two more before I go to bed....They don't bother my stomach & don't keep me up. I take another 1,000mg whenever I feel that I have been exposed to a cold or flu.... I have found no side effects from this....

Calcium

Dr. Clayton's Herbs puts out a formula designed to help your body to absorb calcium {via calcium, magnesium & zinc pills, or plain oyster shell calcium} & through your regular food intake.
The proper name for this mixture is Hair & Nails because that is what it encourages to grow... The added benefit of taking the Hair & Nails & an over the counter calcium supplement; is that the two work hand in hand.
Normal calcium absorbtion rates show that 20-30% of what you eat or injest is actually absorbed. If you only supplement with 60 to 100mg of calcium then your body is only going to absorb from 12 to 20 mgs of that supplement.
Newer studies suggest that women, growing children & people who work out or who are pregnant {check with your doctor} should take between 2,000mg to 3,500mg of Calcium daily to supplement what they may or may not be getting in their food intake.
There really isn't a person...{except for those with Osteo-type arthritises} who shouldn't take some kind of calcium supplement during the course of their lives.
I take the calcium & the Hair & Nails formula in the mornings just after my exercise & before I make my shake to take on the way to work.
I take other supplements that help my skin & my energy levels; but these products can be found on the herbal pages...click here: if you want to go there.....

Just in case you were wondering....is my diet successful for me?
Yes, when I stick to it...

Unfortunately there is always another wonder diet around the corner that my mother or my doctor or my reserve unit suggests that I try...Or mom has made a dish "just for me"...
But when I go back to a 5 day a week vegetarian diet augmented with up to two days of meat eating; logging what I eat & just that 30 minutes of exercising...I find that that the weight does tend to come down & the body looks better...
Selah Enough for now, its time to take my walk on the beach...

There is more to this NoDiet WeightManagement "LifeStyle Change" & there will be some "graduates" of the Weight Management School with their stories here in the future. Keep coming back to this location & check out the difference....

Do You Like this Section? Want to See more things like it?
Care to comment on another type of diet? WRITE TO US: Care of the NoDiet Pages.

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