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The simplest and most effective way to lose weight is by calories counting. This quick guide will give you some tips on how to start losing weight by calories counting.

A food log is a must if you want to see what foods you eat most and why you are gaining or not losing weight.

For more information go to: How to count calories

Keeping track of what you eat

Keeping track of your food intake is necessary to know where most of your energy is coming from. Start off simple by just using a notepad to track your food intake. By doing this you have a log which you can refer to when you need to see where things are going wrong. You don’t need to over complicate the process. Get a notepad and make a simple table that can track what you ate, what time you ate it and how many calories it had. That’s it.

Calorie Counters

To find caloric value of food you should use calorie counters, there are free ones on the internet and you can also buy a book version. There are a few websites that even have meal planning tools.

Some foods like vegetables, meats and fruit may not have the calorie information on them so in these cases the calorie counter is a useful tool. A lot of popular restaurant will have calorie info on their menu on their websites, check it out and use it to keep track of what you eat when you go out. All food is an energy source, some have more than others but eat too much and it will turn into fat. Natural doesn’t mean low calorie, foods like nuts are very high in fat so don’t assume a food is low in calories because it’s healthy. Try to drink only water, getting energy from drinks won’t fill you up and you’ll still end up eating the same amount which could result in an over eating of calories.

Eating out

Restaurants are changing their menus to cater for the health conscious customers who want low calorie tasty foods, take advantage of this. Places like PizzaHut have salad bars so eat this instead of a large pizza with cheese garlic bread, always lookout for low calorie options as most restaurants do have them.

To see my article on low calorie foods go to: Foods that are low in calories

Low calorie snacks

Buy snacks that are packaged into small portions of less than 200 calories. This makes it easier to log what you eat and harder to eat too much of it. If you need to, prepare your own portions into some food bags or tupperware and have enough ready to last a while. This doesn’t mean you should grab five 100 calorie bags and gorge on them because those calories will add up. Snacks from the supermarket are usually not very healthy so go easy on them, snack on thinks like nuts and seeds instead.

Piggin’ out

Your body can only handle so much food at one time so you should not have all your calories in one go like starving yourself all day then going out and having the most fatty and calorie dense food you can find. This is a fast way to put on a lot of fat. As well as calories you should also try to eat foods that dense in nutrients like vitamins, minerals and essential fatty acids. So the ideal foods are low to medium caloric density as well as a high nutirent density like most fibrous vegetables and lean poultry.

Counting calories is probably the simplest way to start your weight loss journey. Log everything you eat and watch out for any patterns in your eating habits, once you get comfortable with that you can start adding some exercise into it and really jolt your weight loss.

Check out my review of some great programs that teach you how to count calories: Weight Loss Tavern product reviews

Excess carbohydrates, or carbs as they are often called, are the biggest interfering factor in the majority of people’s diets when it comes to burning fat.  Although it might appear to be more logical to reduce the intake of fat when trying to lose fat, the hormonal effects of high carb intake will completely block the body’s ability to burn fat. This issue is often how lose weight programs fall short of producing good results – they simply don’t emphasize the importance of avoiding carbs.

Carbohydrate intake blocks the body’s ability to burn fat because it triggers the production of the hormone insulin.  Most people associate insulin with the disease diabetes and with blood sugar control, but it is also directly involved in the storage of fat in the body.  Insulin stimulates the tissues to convert excess blood sugar and store as fat, and at the same time will block the conversion of fat back to sugar so it cannot be burned for energy.

When you eat a lot of carbs, they are quickly digested and absorbed into the blood as blood sugar, also known as glucose.  A rise in blood glucose above what the body needs for its immediate energy needs triggers the release of insulin from the pancrease.  Insulin stimulates the muscles and liver to store the excess glucose as a compound called glycogen, which is a quick energy source.  The amount of storage space available for glycogen is pretty limited, and when that is filled up, the insulin stimulates the fat tissue to store the remaining excess glucose as fat.  This means the more carbs you eat, the more insulin you will produce, and the more fat your body will store. 

Some people think that they can overcome this problem by simply exercising more to make up for eating too many carbs, but this will not work.  Even though exercising more will burn additional calories, they won’t be fat calories!

When you don’t eat a lot of carbs, and don’t produce a lot of insulin, exercise stimulates the body to first burn glycogen, and then turn to burning fat when the glycogen is gone.  But, in the presence of high insulin, once the glycogen is used up, the insulin blocks the conversion of fat to blood sugar, so the body has to burn something else instead to get energy.  That something else is protein from your muscles, not fat! 

Initially, people who are trying to lose weight and continue to eat a lot of carbs may have the illusion that they are burning fat, but in actuality, they are losing water weight and muscle mass.  The longer this continues, the harder it becomes to lose weight, because the reduction in muscle mass results in a slower metabolism. The end result is that the person who continues to eat a lot of carbs while trying to lose weight winds up weak and tired and with a higher percentage of body fat than before they began their weight loss program.   

Dr. George Best is a holistic healthcare provider in San Antonio, Texas.  For more information, and to get his free ebook that explains how different hormones trigger fat gain and loss, visit his lose weight help website.