Eat Less, Move More: The Key to Fitness Success and a Healthier You

After my wife became pregnant with our first child, we went toe-to-toe to see who could gain the most weight. She won that round but while she shed it all after giving birth, I went ahead and hung onto mine. Unfortunately the story was much the same for her next pregnancy and by the time we had two children I was 70 pounds heavier than I started.

Carrying around that much weight wasn't fun and I didn't feel good about myself and eventually I got tired of getting winded on a flight of stairs and sweating from just thinking about a walk around the block and decided to do something about it. I could have chosen then to follow through on some crazy diet-of-the-moment but I didn't. Instead I followed two key principles: eat less, move more.

Eat Less

When people want to lose weight their first thought is they have to do it with some sort of extreme diet, where they either cut out all the carbs and eat hamburgers without buns or they have to reduce themselves to eating nothing but lettuce and living on vitamins. With diets like these it's no surprise that most fail before they even get off the ground. But such extreme actions are completely unnecessary because the key to weight loss is simply to eat less.

When I started out I didn't do anything other than cut down on what I ate. The key here was realizing that the human body only needs so many calories to operate and figuring out where the line lies is the key to success. Once I determined what my normal intake should be I began keeping a food diary of the things I ate and after a couple of days it was pretty obvious what I could reduce. The only real change I made that was noticeable was drinking only diet soda but after a while, even that wasn't noticeable.

Move More

Again, a simple proposition: just be more active. People like to say that they never have time to work out, but this is just an excuse and really, there isn't a lot of commitment required. Just get out there and move more. Even better, if you find time when you would otherwise be doing one thing and figure out how to mix in the exercise, you'll find you have loads of time to work out.

For me the key was movies. When I started my fitness regimen I bought an elliptical trainer and parked it in front of the TV and pretty much anytime I watched a movie, I was on the exercise machine and doing the two thinks at once took a lot of the sting out of the exercise. Health clubs everywhere already know this - even my local YMCA - which is why the rooms with the treadmill also has a bank of TVs.

For me it's the TV but it doesn't have to be for you. It can be anything. It could be reading magazines or calling your mother or whatever. It really doesn't matter, as long as you find the time to do it.

Ensuring Success

Setting out the principles is the easy part, following through with it is the tougher trick, which is why it's a good idea to follow a few simple guidelines when you set out.

1) Be patient. Realize that you're not going to become fitter and slimmer overnight. It took time to gain the weight and fall out of shape and it'll take time to reverse the flow. At first things may seem like they're not working but if you stick with it, it will pay off. In my case I didn't see any weight loss for maybe three weeks and was discouraged but I kept with it because even if I wasn't losing weight, I felt better. And pretty soon, every time I stepped on the scale there were a couple pounds less of me there than before.

2) Set real goals. Most people go into this thinking that the only thing they're going to be happy with is having a body like a supermodel, but this is hardly realistic. To achieve those kinds of results your entire life would have to be reduced to calorie pinching and working out and even then, that might not be enough. Sometimes it's all right to be satisfied with simply being slimmer, with having more energy and feeling good about yourself.

3) Be regimented. If you're going to do it, take it seriously. The key to success is training your mind as much as training your body. This requires you to set time aside each day when you will work on yourself and if you do this long enough eventually exercise will go from being a chore to being something you have to do and you'll feel completely out of sorts until you do it. And then you'll wonder how it's possible you weren't doing it all along.

4) Do it for yourself. It's nice to want to look better so that other people notice and tell you how good you look, but if you're not doing it for yourself, you're never going to be happy. Living a life designed to please others isn't much of a life and besides, if you exercise to please other, you'll hate every second of it. Staying in shape is tough enough already. Don't make it any worse than it has to be. It's only important that you look good and feel better to yourself.

5) Don't quit. Remember, you can do it if you believe you can.

If you want to start getting in shape and lose a few pounds you don't have to grab some fad diet or live an unhealthy lifestyle. Follow my simple advice will help you be the version of you that you always wanted and a lot easier than you thought possible. But remember, always consult with a physician before you commit to any routine.