How to get started on dieting - steps to take to improve success

A journey of a thousands miles starts with planning the first step; the same is true of weight loss. Your diet must start with certain information (your caloric BASELINE) and a plan.

This is part 7 of a series on the fundamentals of dieting. Today it’s time to start your diet, but not necessarily the food restriction part. Your diet begins when you decide to take steps to reduce your weight and there is a small amount of planning the must precede your first day of living, eating and exercise changes. Links to all previous articles can be found at the bottom of the page.

Let me briefly recap yesterday's take home message: You can’t lose fat weight quickly. In an earlier article we discussed, at length, the physiological reasons your body will fight any rapid weight loss and yesterday we looked at a hypothetical person, named Jane, to demonstrated conclusively that, for Jane’s age, weight, height and daily activity, that if she fasted for one week, her absolute maximum weight loss would be less than 2 pounds -- assuming she stayed hydrated. The question is: How long can she fast?

Of course if she dehydrates, she can lose much more, but as we discussed, what’s the point of losing water weight?

FACT: Very overweight people lose weight faster than less overweight people.

Before we jump into the deep end of the pool, let me illustrate one more point, I think it is important and can affect your success. Yesterday we used Jane as an example, today I want to use a nice person who wrote and asked me to help her calculate her BMR and lifestyle calories. With her permission, and a name change, I would like to present Mary.

Mary is 47 years old, 5’ 9” tall, is 280 lbs and has a ‘moderately active’ lifestyle. Mary works at a daycare center and herds children 12 hours a day, which is what puts her the ‘moderately active’ category. Her BMR is 1976 calories/day and her BMR + lifestyle = 3063 calories/day.

REMEMBER: One pound of fat is equal to 3500 calories.

Now let’s compare Jane and Mary. Recall that we showed that if Jane fasted for one week she could, in theory, lose about 2 pounds. If Mary fasted for one week she would lose a tad over 6 pounds, but remember, part of that would be muscle mass that was converted to glucose to sustain her brain and a few other body functions. If we give the nod to Mary, she probably lost about 4 pounds after one week of fasting.

What is the weight loss PLATEAU?

As you can see, Mary can lose weight twice as fast as Jane, at least at first. The reason is Mary’s BMR is higher than Jane’s (1976 cal vs. 1560 cal) and Mary's lifestyle is more active than Jane's. However, as Mary’s weight goes down her BMR will go down as well. This is part of the PLATEAU effect.

When you reach a plateau, you’re eating the exact same number of calories, but your weight loss is slowing down. It is caused by the steady change in your BMR.

Think of it like this: if Mary needs 3063 calories/day (without exercise) and she consumes 1872 calories/day (which was the number of calories Jane burned each day) Mary would immediately begin to lose weight. She is clearly consuming fewer calories than she burns each day (1872 vs. 3063). However, over time, as Mary loses more and more weight there will come a point where her new BMR x ‘moderately active lifestyle’ will equal 1872, at which point, Mary’s weight loss will come to an abrupt stop!

If Mary wants to continue her weight loss (without exercise) she will have to reduce her caloric intake well below 1872 calories.

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