If you have the willpower, you can lose weight by eating less. Most mere mortals tend to find that after eating less, or in some cases, too little, they set themselves up for a binge and gain back the weight they lost. However, it is possible to cut back on your current diet and, if you can sustain the reduced-calorie diet long enough, you can lose weight. Were you to exercise, however, you'd develop lean muscle tissue that burns more calories.
Burn or Trim 3,500 Calories to Lose a Pound
In order to lose 1 pound in seven days, you would have to eat 3,500 calories less than you do now or exercise to burn off those calories. For example, if you cut 500 calories from your daily diet for seven days, you'd lose 1 pound a week. Thus, if you eat 2,600 calories a day now, cut back to 2,100 calories a day and see if you lose about 1 pound a week.
Eat a Varied Whole Foods Diet
Eating a widely varying diet can help you stick to a new diet long enough to lose weight. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has designed a nutritional matrix called "My Food Pyramid" that provides sensible diet guidelines. They recommend eating vegetables, fruits, whole grains, including millet, quinoa, brown rice and oats, lean proteins, eggs, nuts, legumes, low-fat dairy foods and non-saturated fats, such as olive, sunflower, flax and hemp seed oil. By following a diet with a number of food options, you can help prevent yourself from binging on less healthy foods.
Regular Exercise Burns Calories
Although a limited diet alone will enable you to lose weight, if you add regular moderate cardiovascular exercise to your daily routine, you will lose weight more quickly. The Mayo Clinic estimates that if you weigh 160 pounds and were to walk an hour at a rate of 3.5 mph, you'd burn about 277 calories. Simply by adding an hour's worth of exercise to your day, you could trim about 250 calories a day to lose that one pound per week.
Keep a Food Diary
Maintain a food diary to see what you are eating and to help identify how you can change what and how much you are eating to lose weight. Record the time, how hungry you are, and what you ate and drank. If you notice that you skip breakfast and eat a very large dinner late at night, your body may be storing extra calories as a defense mechanism against temporary starvation. Instead, consider eating a high-protein breakfast and a small snack of less than 200 calories between breakfast and lunch, and lunch and dinner to prevent yourself from eating a giant dinner. Also consider if you are eating when you are actually tired, thirsty or bored. You might drink something before each meal or go to bed at an earlier time if you are a night owl to see if this helps you eat less.
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