Guide to Weight Loss

Approximately 127 million adults in the U.S. are overweight, 60 million are obese and 9 million are extremely obese. It seems every week there is a new fad diet to lose weight quick. A miracle pill, an extreme eating regimen or no-exercise exercise equipment are popular on the internet as lose weight quick schemes.

Regardless of what you may have heard about eating only grapefruit and cabbage, the only true way to lose weight is by burning more calories than you take in. The only way to keep the wait off is by a healthy diet and exercise.

Once you make the choice to make a lifestyle change, it is easy to then be lost in a sea of weight loss websites. First thing you should do is keep a food and exercise diary. Write down everything you put in your mouth and the calories. Then find a website that will calculate your BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate). This is the amount of calories you burn at resting state. Once you find out your daily calorie requirements, restrict that number by 500. You could probably restrict it more to lose weight quicker, but remember you want to do this in a healthy way to make sure you don't rebound back.

Now, you know how many calories you are eating. You know how many calories you need to lose weight. So now you need to make smarter eating choices. Make sure to stock your cabinets with healthy and low calorie foods. You can't go wrong with fruits and vegetables.

Here are a couple tips and ideas for snacking alternatives.

-Crystal Light/Propel Fitness Water - One important way you will be able to restrict calories, is by giving up caloric beverages. Now, if you are like me and can't stand just drinking water, these flavored packets will do the world of difference.

-Diet Soda - If you are a pop drinker, you will need to make sure to count those calories towards your daily total. If you don't want to do that, you will need to switch to diet soda or water.

-Frozen Fruit - If you are looking for a good work snack, I would recommend you buy a bag of frozen fruit.

-Fudgsicles/Popsicles - If you do your reading on the nutritional information, you will find that fudgsicles and popsicles (the lite kind) are very low in calories usually around 20-40 calories each. You can even find them as low as 5 calories a pop!

-Salsa - low in calories and extremely tasty. Just make sure to limit the amount of chips you eat with it.

-Vegetables - Celery and pickles have virtually no calories. Other options such as carrots, broccoli and cauliflower make for good snacks with low calories.

- Popcorn - Another low calorie snack, popcorn. Just make sure to read the nutritional facts before buying it. I like to buy the mini bags and pop it at work. Makes everyone jealous!

Bottom line, your health is one of the most important things you have. Make a commitment to a healthy life and you will feel better, have more energy and be more confident in daily activities.