Nov 20, 2020

The easy way to lose weight

The tools you need: Google Sheets, MyFitnessPal, and a scale.

Your first task is to track your weight and calories for the next 3 weeks everyday. This can be annoying but the good news is you don’t have to change your eating at all. So eat like you normally do. Track everything and do not lie—they are just numbers. Don’t assign any meaning to them.

After 3 weeks of tracking, you should average your weight and calories over each week to help you see a trend. Because even if you are consistently weighing yourself at the same time every morning, your weight is going to fluctuate from differences in water consumption. Likewise, your calories may be all over the place.

Once you have these averages, you can figure out your maintenance level and what to eat to lose weight.

For example, let’s say you gained a pound per week eating 3000 calories per day. A pound is roughly 3500 calories. So in this example, you are overeating by 500 calories. Therefore, your maintenance level is 2500. And if you want to lose a pound per week, you should eat 2000 calories per day on average.

Now, it may sound daunting, maybe even impossible, to restrict yourself to eating so much less than you’re used to but I have tricks for making those calories fill you up that I will discuss in the next few days.