The Key To Losing Weight For Good

Losing weight is hard.  This is a lesson I didn’t learn until the recent years.  I was always on the small side until a few years ago, when I had to start going on and off steroids for a medical condition.  One of the side effects, the worst side effect in my opinion, is the weight gain.  Slowly I gained about thirty pounds.  When you are five foot one, that is a lot of weight.

I was determined to lose weight and I tried really hard.  I did Weight Watchers and found myself starving all the time.  I think knowing how many points I had left for the day left me feeling deprived.  I tried counting calories, but would find myself thinking something to the affect of ‘oh, I’ve only ate 900 calories so far today, sure I can have this chocolate cake’.  South Beach taught me I am a carb lover.  Are you getting the picture?

I am sure all those plans are great and know people who have had good successes with them but they didn’t work for me.  Nor did exercising for the sole purpose of losing weight. No matter how much I sweated, no dice.

What did work for me… get ready for this… was common sense.  The best way I have found to lose weight is to eat whatever I want.  No, seriously.   But, and it’s a big but, I don’t eat an overabundance of it.  Small portions have become key for me.  If I want chocolate chip cookies fresh from the oven with a tall glass of chocolate milk, I indulge.  Then I skip having bread with dinner.  I balance, for lack of a better word.  I choose low cal and low-fat because they are healthy options that I like and they taste good.  I try to eat things like yogurt and pretzels before bedtime.  But I don’t deprive myself.

Exercise has fit in my life, too.  But I now do it for my health, not weight.  And the pounds have slowly but surely melted away and stayed away.  All the fancy diets in the world didn’t work for me.  My key to losing weight was good old common sense.  Eat less.