Every now and again a fad diet comes along. Something that tells you to eat only certain foods, like grapefruit, or to avoid certain types of food, like the Atkins diet. According to Subway, you can lose weight simply by eating their sandwiches. Some of these diets may work. Some of them may be healthy. Some of them are not. There is, however, one diet that provides guaranteed to provide results. I call this diet the “eat less and get off your butt” diet.
The eat less and get off your butt diet is comprised of two main parts. Part one is ‘eat less’ and part two is ‘get off your butt’.
Part One: Eat Less
One of the main reasons people are overweight is the simple fact that they eat too much. Eating too much makes you fat, therefore, eating less will help you get thinner. Don’t have that second or third Big Mac, stop at one helping. Just eat less. If you are very overweight, your body naturally burns more calories than a skinny persons while you are just sitting still. Any reduction in calorie intake will help you lose weight almost immediately. But we do need a certain amount of nutrients, which brings us to:
Part One B: Eat Better
It is not enough to eat less, you will be best served by making what you do eat count. They have these things called ‘vegetables’. They have these other things called ‘fruit’. If you have never heard of these, look them up. They are in the ‘Produce’ section of your local ‘grocery store’. Not all food has to be fast, some of it should be good.
Part Two: Get Off Your Butt
The second part of the eat less and get off your butt diet is the more difficult of the two, but it is arguably the more important. This part involves standing up and possibly even leaving the house by means other than your car. This part is also known as physical activity, and it is a vital part of losing weight.
If you are a couch potato and love to watch TV, I have a recommendation for you: become a treadmill potato. Or an elliptical trainer potato. Buy some exercise equipment and plunk it down in front of the TV. Rather than watch TV from the couch, watch it as you work out. The TV keeps your mind off the exercise and the exercise helps you lose weight.
An alternative recommendation is to take up running. My advice for the first day: stretch really well, dress for the weather and bring some upbeat music in the portable music player of your choice. Try to run for 30 seconds, then walk for a minute. Repeat until you can’t go on. If you are out of shape, it is going to hurt like hell. But it gets better. I guarantee you it is going to get better. It hurts less and less, you begin to be able to run farther and farther and you begin to experience the runner’s high, which is absolutely marvelous.
The point of all this is to get off the couch, out of that desk chair you are sitting in right now and move.
I, by the way, have lost 35 pounds on this system so far.
