How to Lose Weight

Monitoring your weight is an important part of dieting. It is not only nice to see your weight going down, it is also the best way to check you have your calorie deficit in the right range. It is not easy to count accurately how many calories you eat and how many calories your body uses. The best way is to monitor your weight and check that you only lose one to two pounds a week.

Weighing Scales

Most weighing scales claim to be accurate within two percent. It does not really matter how accurate your scales are. What matters is that they are consistent so you can accurately measure how much weight you are losing over the course of your diet.

You should always try to use the same set of scales to monitor your weight. It is okay if your scales are two percent off but if you then use a different set of scales and they are two percent off in the other direction, then they are four percent apart. You cannot accurately monitor your weight loss if you use different scales.

Weight Fluctuation

As well as using the same set of scales, it is also good if you can weigh yourself at the same time of day.

Everyone's weight fluctuates a little during the day. It is easy to consume two pounds of food and fluid when you eat a meal. When you have finished you will be two pounds heavier than when you started. When you sleep, you will exhale around a pound of water from moisture in your breath. Therefore, when you wake up you will be around a pound lighter than when you went to bed. When you go to the toilet you will excrete -- well I don't want to guess how much weight you excrete when you go to the toilet but you get the idea. You will be a little lighter when you have finished.

Therefore, if you want to accurately monitor how much weight you are losing, you need to weigh yourself at the same point in the day. Perhaps when you first wake up in the morning or just before you go to bed.

Monitoring Weight Loss

Now that you can accurately measure how much weight you are losing, you can use those measurements to check that your calorie deficit is in the right range. It is simple. You want a daily calorie deficit of 500-1000 calories to lose one to two pounds a week. If you are not losing weight then you need to increase your calorie deficit by eating less and exercising more. If you are losing more than two pounds a week then your calorie deficit is too big and you should eat more.

Don't worry if you can't see any difference from one day to the next. Losing weight can seem like a slow process. You should monitor the gradual trend. How much weight have you lost over a few days or a week?

Starting the Diet

You may lose several pounds in the first few days of your diet. It is important to realise that most of this weight loss is not fat or muscle mass. It is just your body adapting to its new diet regime. As the food in your stomach works its way through your intestines and out the other end, it is not replaced by the same amount of food so you become a little lighter. Your body now has less energy to deliver around the body so it dehydrates a little and becomes still lighter. This is not real weight loss. You just have a little less food and water in your system.

Do not panic if you have lost four or five pounds in the first week. This probably does not mean you have gone too far and pushed your body into starvation mode. Two or three pounds of the weight loss will be your body adapting to the new diet.

You should also realise that when you finish your diet, those two or three pounds will inevitably return as there is a little more food and water in your system.

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