No one really needs an entire book to find out how to lose weight. They need the correct set of simple instructions on what the right habits are and how to develop those habits. They need a bit of knowledge about why those habits are going to do the job, and they need to figure out how to make the above pieces fall into a lifestyle.
The lifestyle part is the most important. All the gimmick diets fail you once you lose your weight goal, because you can't live on the gimmick diets forever. Most of them aren't even very good for you.
These notes are an important preface to discussing Mr. Ellis book, because he takes you down a lifestyle journey that is unusual in the world of weight loss guides. At lot of weight loss guides are written by fitness trainers who have rarely actually had to lose weight, or medical/research professionals who think they know how but are sitting around with a 30 BMI while they are telling you how to get to 22 BMI. Even if their advice works, there is a bit of disconnect from the reality of what you will experience. When the reality differs from the plan, the dieter can become discouraged and give up.
Jon Ellis didn't give up. A large portion of this book describes his daily journey in losing his first 25 pounds. He discusses what he did, when he lost weight, and when he picked some back up. I think this diary of his experience is important for anyone who has struggled with diets to read. You are going to recognize stumbling blocks that have caused you to question if you were on a real weight loss path, or if what you are doing is still working. Finding the validation in Jon's words that you WILL get past these mysterious little periods of "non-productivity" may be the greatest service Jon provides here.
The actual diet advice he recommends has been around for decades, I'll say centuries. There is really nothing new under the sun in losing weight. The problem is that there are so many people trying to make money from your desire to lose weight, pitching so many methods, that you wind up confused as to where to go. Jon's advice is simple and correct. Control what you eat, where possible modify what you eat, get some exercise. Yes, eat less and exercise!! LOL He's right! Yet this is not the fitness guru's punish yourself for an hour a day method. It is not the extreme dietitian's eat nothing but tofu and wheat germ regimen. It is a solid lifestyle plan for eating what you are going to eat but paying attention to how you are doing that.
Finally (but it leads the book so its really early), Jon describes to you a convenient method to keep up with what you consume and how you burn it off. This gets to the "forming habits" part of what I mentioned early on. To make eating at a level which maintains the weight you want possible, you have to develop a feel for what you can eat daily. When you start out, you won't have a feel for it. Most calorie counting schemes fail because of convenience, yet they are essential for you to learn to develop eating habits. Jon's advice here (and the method he used) is simple, sensible, and free.
This is a valuable read for anyone who wants to lose weight, particularly if you have tried and tried and have given up the ghost on that particular goal.
I know Jon's advice to be correct because I've lived it myself in very similar ways over the years. I recognize in his words what has worked for me, even tho I have slacked off a bit the last few years! I've found inspiration here to get back on track. ;-)
Note: I "met" Jon in an Amazon forum recently, and offered to review his book. He furnished me with an e-copy for me to read and review. This does not effect my recommendation of the book.
UPDATE: 6/20/2011
One week progress report:
For the last week I've used a similar method for tracking what I eat to the method Jon describes in his book. I'm using a web site called SparkPeople.com instead of the one Jon has used. I doubt its any better than Jon's recommended site, I just found it more conveniently as both an iPad app and regular web site, and my account logs in through both. In looking at EVERYTHING we were consuming, both my wife and I quickly tipped to some eating mistakes we had not been paying attention to. For example, I read Jon's book Sunday night a week ago, and we had already eaten dinner. My wife made a ham dinner with a vegetable and macaroni and cheese. When I found the web site and got set up, I entered what we ate for dinner. Kraft macaroni and cheese dinner ... 400 calories and little to no food value received in return. The leftover is still in a dish in the refrigerator, and likely we should just throw it out, because I can't imagine I'm ever going to want to eat any of it again. LOL Mac and Cheese is a somewhat regular staple of many home cooked meals. Fiber is low at 1.5 grams. Protein is at or below the levels of other family meal vegetables that could be substituted for it with no notice taken. 19 grams of fat for something that just tastes OK ... its not even a guilty pleasure. LOL
With that lesson learned, we started to do some more research. We read again about lot of foods we already knew about but were just out of correct eating habits. I don't drink diet drinks ... can't stand the taste. Recently I've probably had one or two cans of carbonated drinks a day ... at 150 to 200 calories per. I had exactly ONE all this week. I went on the water drinking campaign suggested by Jon, and many other places as well. I'm almost certainly drinking more than the eight 8 oz glasses suggested. I tend to drink more like 12 ounces at a time and I'm probably doing 9 to 12 a day. That much water does tend to kill off a certain percentage of snack craving. I also discovered that one grape tomato actually satisfies a snack craving for me just as well as three oatmeal cookies used to. The difference in calories? 2 for one grape tomato ... 225 for three oatmeal cookies. LOL
By adjusting what we've eaten this week to be more efficient, I'm actually eating far fewer calories than indicated by the program calculated by the web site, which I had set for 1.5 pounds per week. I probably cut 1000 to 1500 calories per day out of my consumption. Yet I'm feeling less hungry between meals, not more. When I do feel hungry I'm not minding it as much, probably because I'm over all the extra sugar that was in my daily consumption. I actually have more energy, because once again, I'm not running on sugar like I was 10 days ago.
Net result, I lost 5 pounds in seven days instead of 1.5 pounds. I don't seriously think I will continue to lose 5 pounds a week. The lower the percentage of body fat gets, the more reluctant the body is to shed what is left. However, its a very validating start, and if I continue at 1.5 pounds per week from now on I'll be quite happy.
My goal is to lose 20 pounds from the start of the diet, then asses what I look like at that point and decide if I should go another 5. I didn't start this at what anyone looking at me would consider to be overweight, yet I look "rounder" to myself in the mirror than I know I should. After I've lost the 20 (or 25) pounds, I'll increase my calories back up to a higher maintenance level to stop losing weight. I may even be able to throw back in a couple more of my cherished Cherry Dr. Peppers (per week) at that point! LOL
4th of July week will be a blip in the effort though. We're having a cook out, which means hamburgers, hotdogs, baked beans, and potato salad. I might gain back two pounds that week. I've already thought through the need to plan ahead for the 4th, Labor Day (another traditional cookout in our family), Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's Eve. I should have the weight loss goal comfortably in hand before Thanksgiving. Then I'll look to gain no more than two pounds each for the upcoming three holidays, and go back on the weight loss calorie level for the month of January.
We'll see how reality meets plan now.
*** Update after July 4th ***
Although I ate some potentially diet damaging foods, portion contol turned out to be easier than I had expected. During that week and the next (which included not only leftovers from the 4th, but birthday cake as well) I lost 1.5 pounds each of those weeks. Could I have lost even more without ANY cake and potato salad? Probably. But I don't regard this as a race. I regard it as living my life more sensibly. I don't plan on going the rest of my life without some of the things I really enjoy, so there is no good reason to do that now, either. What I DO plan is to not overdo those menu items as I have done in the past.
*** 6 week update ***
I've blogged weekly about this elsewhere, but after 6 weeks following Jon's advice to use a convenient calorie counting tool, and the ripple effect that has had on our eating, I'm now down 14.5 pounds, and my wife has lost 10. Counting calories is not about seeing when you reach a calorie limit for the day and cutting off your eating after that. Counting calories is about learning what foods are more efficient calories, what are waste calories, and deciding what you can replace and what you can eliminate entirely from your life without stress.
I've virtually eliminated sweetened soft drinks (only 2 consumed in the last six weeks), potato chips and other high calorie nutritionally vacant snacks, and some meal components that are just taste and waste. I've averaged just over 1400 calories a day for the last six weeks, and yet I'm less hungry at any given moment than when I was eating far more! That is possible because what I do eat now is what my body really needs to function well. And I'm not eating "diet food", at least not much.
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