Weight-loss Planning & Tracking

Losing weight and keeping it off requires assessing your health and fitness levels, setting specific goals, monitoring your efforts and tracking your progress. Creating an exercise and diet plan that allow you to track your results will not only motivate you, but let you make adjustments to say on track. Write goals and keep a chart or diary of workout data and calorie intake to help you take off extra pounds and keep them from coming back. Consult your doctor before beginning any new diet or exercise regimen.

Considerations

Your weight-loss goals should include not only a set number of pounds you wish to lose, but a schedule for losing the weight. Page Love, a registered dietitian and owner of Atlanta's Nutrifit Sport Therapy, recommends a weight-loss goal of 1 to 2 pounds per week for women and 2 to 3 pounds per week for men. If you are unable to exercise and must try to lose weight with calorie reduction only, your weight loss may take longer. If you do an hour or more of aerobic exercise each day, you may lose weight faster.

Calorie Planning

Determine how many calories per day you can eat to maintain your weight before you begin your weight-loss plan. This will help you determine how many calories you want to reduce each day through diet and how many you'll burn through exercise. You can use the U.S. Department of Agriculture's free Dietary Guidelines for Adults, or find an online personal calorie calculator such as the one at LIVESTRONG's MyPlate. You can also meet with your doctor, a registered dietitian or a personal trainer to determine your caloric needs.

Nutrition Planning and Tracking

You'll need to burn 500 calories more than you eat each day to lose 1 lb. of weight per week, the Mayo Clinic explains. Starting with your daily calorie number for weight maintenance, reduce your daily calories by 500, burn 500 calories through exercise or create your deficit with a combination of exercise and diet. Use nutrition labels or an online food calorie calculator to create daily meal plans that meet your goals, or to track the calories you eat each day after each meal. Write daily meal plans to stay on track to meet your goals --- writing down calories after each meal may end up causing you to overeat early in the day, then eat too few calories later in the day to meet your deficit.

Exercise Considerations

Before you choose an exercise routine, consider your level of health and fitness. If you are a senior with concerns about osteoporosis, have a joint injury or are obese, you might want to avoid high-impact exercises, which have both feet leaving the ground at once. If you are new to exercise, you may not be able to begin aerobic exercise until you build cardiovascular stamina with slower, fat-burning exercise like brisk walking.

Burning Calories

For most non-athletes, the most efficient way to burn calories for weight loss is with aerobic exercise. Aerobic exercise is performed at a vigorously intense level --- similar to jogging --- usually for 30 minutes or more. The American Heart Association recommends aerobic exercise sessions of 60 to 90 minutes for weight loss. Choose aerobic exercises that take into account the health and fitness considerations you noted as you began your planning. For example, choose an exercise bike instead of a treadmill if you want non-impact exercise. Choose an elliptical or weight machine instead of an exercise bike if you want more weight-bearing work to help prevent osteoporosis. Plan your daily menus in conjunction with your exercise sessions --- your daily calorie intake will be less on days when you exercise.

Tracking

Keep a chart that records the calories you eat each day and the number of calories you burn through exercise. Track data from your workouts, such as what exercises you did, how long your workout lasted, your average heart rate during your workout and other relevant data. This will allow you to adjust your plan after a few weeks if your plan is not working, or if you reach a plateau. Weigh yourself regularly to track your results. According to research published in 2009 in the "Nutrition Journal," women who weighed themselves daily or weekly lost more weight than those who did not.