Losing Weight: Tips and Tricks

The Basics

• Losing a pound a week takes a deficit of around 3,500 calories. That means, more or less, that falling off the horse even once can set you back a whole week. Don’t do it.
• Don’t eat while doing something else. Stop and pay attention to each bite. Even though it tastes awful.
• If you’re eating something out of a box, like chips, count out your portion and put it in a bowl or on a paper towel. Put away the box before eating your portion.
• Drink water all the time. You should probably keep a jug near you.
• If you don’t count every calorie for at least two weeks, you’re screwing up. Don’t sabotage yourself.

Eating Out

• If you have to go out to a restaurant, try this: Order whatever you want (be reasonable), but only eat half of it. Immediately after, go online and try to see if you can figure out how many calories you just wolfed down. (Most chain restaurants have that information on their websites.)

This will help you avoid ribbing from your buddies about why you’re eating a salad. (Although, really, screw them if they think trying to lose weight is silly.)

• No matter what you are eating, leave at least some of the food on your plate. Even a single bite is fine. You may be surprised how hard it is for you to let food go to waste.

Safe Foods

Some foods have few calories. Most of them are disgusting. These aren’t:

• Diet Soda: Coke Zero, Diet Dr. Pepper, Diet A&W are all choke-down-able.
• Green Tea. (Bonus: It actually helps you lose weight.)
• Jello Sugar-Free Pudding with Skim Milk. Freeze it in ice trays for delicious, rock-hard pudding nodules.
• Baked Wheat Thins. 16 to a serving, so be careful.

Booze
• Alcohol has calories. If you plan on drinking, plan accordingly, even if that means skipping a meal (or two). A pint of beer is roughly 200 calories, while a shot (not a glass!) of booze is about 100.
• You may not have to cut out beer entirely, but you’re going to have to plan around drinking. That means having a six pack every night is out of the question, probably. This is perhaps the worst thing ever.

Okay, I think that’s about it on weight loss for now, but I’d love to hear both the tricks you all have used to keep yourself on track as well as low-calorie foods that are easy and accessible.