Every year, millions of those people hope to lose the weight. But only a few actually prepare for it or even start to try. Many of those who do try, jump on some fad diet, toss in just a little exercise and hope for the best. Is it any wonder they fail?

All successful businesses have a solid business plan. All successful sports teams have a solid game plan. In order to succeed in losing weight, you need a good solid weight loss plan and preparation.

Here are just a few suggestions you can start right now to be more prepared in reaching your goals:

• The best way to fight temptation is to prevent it in the first place. Prevention begins in the kitchen. Start replacing all the unhealthy junk food with healthier alternatives.
• Take lunch and healthy snacks to work. Having handy, healthy snacks will help you avoid the temptation of hitting the vending machine.
• Eat a little something before leaving to eat out. This will help you be less hungry and less likely to order an unhealthy appetizer.
• I can’t say it enough… Eat a good, healthy breakfast. This will help keep you from getting hungry through out the morning and wanting to munch on unhealthy snacks later.
• Keep healthy snacks handy at home, at the office and even in your car.
• Save some time by making a double batch when you cook and store some for later.
• The most important piece of fitness equipment you’ll have is a good, comfortable pair of gym or running shoes. Make sure you have the right pair.
• No need to spend a ton of money on equipment you don’t really need right now. You can start with some home gym basics like exercise ball, resistance bands, small medicine ball, jump rope, small dumbbells.
• Carry a bottle of water with you and stay hydrated.

There are actually several different ways to help boost your metabolism, however, since everyone is different some ways work better for some people than for others. I hope the list here will help you find ways that will work for you.  If you have a slower metabolism (like mine), your body is more likely stores fat which in turn, means you have a hard time losing weight. By boosting your metabolism, you’re body will be able to burn more calories on a daily basis, helping you to lose weight.

Many things affect a person’s metabolism including age, weight, stress, hormonal changes, genetics, diet, lean muscle mass and how much exercise you get on a daily basis. It may seem complicated and daunting, but with commitment, there are relatively easy ways to boost your metabolism. Here are some tips that should help you boost your metabolism and help you lose those unwanted pounds.

1. Eat Breakfast! Breakfast really is the most important meal of the day and so many just don’t do it.  Breakfast kick starts your metabolism and gives it a boost throughout the day. The majority of people who eat a healthy breakfast have fewer weight and health issues than those who do not.
2. Drink More Water. I know this can be hard. I have trouble at times drinking enough water myself. But water is not only the lubricant of the body, it also flushes toxins out of the body and keeps the kidneys operating at maximum efficiency. This helps the liver do what it does best, metabolize fat stores.
3. Eat 5 to 6 Small Meals. Eating 5 to 6 small meals per day may sound like a lot but really it’s not. Keeping them spaced about 3 hours apart gives the body a steady supply of energy throughout the day and helps prevent binge eating.
4. Do Not Skip Meals. This is one of the worst things to do. Skipping meals in order to lose weight is counter productive because it actually slows down your metabolism and can lead to binge eating in the evening.
5. Have a Plan. Taking the time to plan out your meals for the day, helps prevent binge eating. By seeing what is on the menu, you are more likely to stick to it!
6. Build Lean Body Mass. Don’t worry ladies! You can’t bulk up by building lean muscle but you will burn calories. In fact, the more lean muscle you have the more calories you will burn, even while resting. You can build muscle through resistance or weight training 2 or 3 times a week. Also, you can boost your metabolism by doing cardio exercises such as running, doing the elliptical, taking a fitness class, etc.
7. Sleep, Sleep, Sleep! Often we don’t get enough good, restful sleep. Those who don’t get enough sleep, tend to gain weight. This may be because when you sleep, your body heals and regenerates itself, this includes rebuilding muscle.
8. Spice It Up. Research has shown that eating spicy foods is a good thing. Eating spicy foods that make you sweat can actually help boost your metabolism. As long as your stomach can tolerate spicy foods, go for it. However, you should still watch the salt content.

If you are dedicated, you can boost your metabolism. You don’t need to stress over each little thing but if you are eating right and exercise, you’re body should start dropping the body fat and have much more energy.

This certainly isn’t to say I’m giving up. Far from it! It just makes me more determined to make as many changes as possible in the time I have left in this comp. I still have the Max Muscle Challenge which last until June. NOW that I believe I have a real shot at winning. Besides that, I have bigger and better plans for all of this hard work.

I have to be more focused and more determined. I’m going to do some tweaking to my meal plan (probably cut some carbs) and I’m going to bust my ass in the gym even more than I have been. I definitely have to up the cardio which I’ve been a little lax with the last couple weeks.

Hoo-ha! I stepped on it and found that I’m not really full of crap as I’ve been told, nor am I full of ‘everything nice’ like my mommy told me, but rather, I’m full of fat. 46%, to be exact. I tried again and it said 48%. I am a little floored that almost half of my physical composition is fat. It’s like the O in my h2O. Well no, it’s more like the cl in my NaCl. But enough for the nerdy attempts at an analogy. I’m almost half fat for Pete’s sake.

The scale came with a users manual type dealio that shows body fat percentages, and what’s considered underweight, normal, overweight and obese. I’m off the charts, yo. I am really not feeling this.

I have two choices. I can feel sorry for myself and whine about how it’s unfair and on and on, or I can use it as motivation. Lets see what I can do to get it to 45%. When it starts falling, because it will, I’ll challenge myself to crack 40. Then into the 30s. 35, 30 and then into the 20s. Keep pushing, mala. Lets have at it.

But what to do about exercise? About eating my 1200 calories – about COUNTING my calories?  Everything in Serbia is home made. Nothing there comes in a package, except cigarettes. I doubt Lean Cuisine has made it’s debut there – not that I’d have room with the home made meals that will most definitely come with an expectation to eat, eat, eat!

It’s tricky, this going away thing, and staying on track. A few days won’t blow your whole diet, and a week off from the gym isn’t going to totally set you back to square one.  A month long European vacation, however, is probably going to mess me up just a little (Woe is me). If you’re planning on being away from home more than a few days, it’s a good idea to plan head so you can stay on track with your weight loss goals.

5 ways to exercise while on vacation

1. Walking is good. Unless you’re going to Alaska in January or Madagascar in the rainy season, you can pretty much walk anywhere you go in the world. My husbands home town offers plenty of opportunity to walk. Truth is, we’ll do more walking there in the month we’re there than what we’ve done here in the little country town we live in in the last year.
2. While everyone sleeps… so maybe I won’t have my shiny elliptical, but before bed or before getting up, I can still do sit ups (or just sit up?) Because we’re a close family and we sometimes share the same room for sleeping, this might not always be possible. I’ll have to figure out an alternative, like maybe going for a walk.
3. Eat less. When going out to new places, or going back to familiar ones, we tend to be offered more food (and less healthy choices) than we’ve had since we started paying attention to our diet. Eat smaller portions, and choose the healthiest options when you can.  Maybe just 1 chunk of ratluk instead of 2. If you’re visiting a place where you just can’t do that, find an alternative. Maybe after dinner, you can take A walk.
4. Enjoy the sites, or just take a breather from family by going for a walk.
5. If all else fails, try walking.

When you’re working to improve your health, and exercising to lose weight, you are already consciously aware of choices you make that affect your journey. Be good to yourself, and remember you are on vacation so don’t torture yourself too much stressing about diet, Just keep moving and make healthy choices as often as possible. Come home relaxed, refreshed and ready to hit it hard again!

So, my family accuses me of having some fascination with toilets. My husband would classify me as anal retentive, stuck (pardon the pun) in Freuds sickosexual anal stage.

Well, I can admit that the first picture I took when I stepped foot in Europe was of a public Loo in London.
I guess it was pretty unimpressive, though I found the bowl weirdly roundy.

When I got to Austria, I thought it was kinda cool to see the signs over the bathroom now read “WC”.  At least I didn’t have to worry about finding the German word for toilet (bahnhaus? badenhaus? voda klozet?) buried in my brain from 10 years ago.

Okay so I am a little interested in toilets. Yes, yes, I took pictures of one in Serbia, too. Hey, I didn’t know these kinds of toilets even existed.

And I suppose I am real careful about running out of toilet paper. Really, really careful.

So okay whatever, I have some weird toilet thing, and you have no idea why I’m on about the terlit in this fat loss blog.

Well, it occurred to me that some people may be teased, tortured or tormented (not me) for looking at their own poop when they get off the pot (not me). But poop examination isn’t just for babies and grandmas. It’s important and can tell you stuff about what’s going on, on the inside.

So I knew there had to be some measure, somewhere, so that poop could be classified.  We’re a classifying kind of society, aren’t we? So, I searched. Sure enough wiki had some great information of poop types and meanings. They even have a graphic, “The Bristol Stool Chart”, though I have spared you from including it here. This chart classifies poop into categories, many of which are pretty Britishly colorful.

As wiki has it, according to this poop scale, there are 7 types (italics are mine):

1. Separate hard lumps, like nuts (hard to pass). Drinking enough water?
2. Sausage-shaped but lumpy. Hard to digest dinner? Eating a lot of seeds or nuts?
3. Like a sausage but with cracks on its surface. Okay I dont really look well enough to find cracks
4. Like a sausage or snake, smooth and soft. Bowl wrappers. Stuff you can be proud of.
5. Soft blobs with clear cut edges (passed easily).
6. Fluffy pieces with ragged edges, a mushy stool.
7. Watery stool, entirely liquid.

In summary, it says that type 1 and 2 indicate constipation, 3 and 4 are normal, and 5-7 are indicative of diarrhea. I guess I didn’t need a chart to figure that out.

There’s more info about poop color. Yellow can indicate infection. Black can mean you have blood in your stool, and may indicate you have an ulcer. If you have foods rich in iron, though, it could cause your stool to be black. I know Pepto Bismol (or is that Milk of Magnesia?) also makes it black, though I can’t recall why.

Blue poop (now that’s something for jar at a weird art show) can result from treatment for different poisonings. Interestingly enough kool aid and grape soda can also turn it blue…

My mom always said green poop from a baby meant it wasn’t getting enough food. I’m not sure if the same applies to adults, but if it’s green and you haven’t eaten a bag of spinach, I’d wonder why.

Silver or aluminum colored poop can be bad news, indicating biliary blockage combined with intestinal bleeding, or carcinoma.
It could also mean you forgot to unwrap your sandwich at lunch…naw, just shittin ya.

Nothing to document poopy smells, though, at least not that I have found. I’m sure my mom was a master of the poop, after having 8 kids. I can still hear her telling me emphatically one time, when I was a kid, “Oh…MARY! That smells like VIRUS!” Cracks me the hell up whenever I remember that.

Anyway, don’t be afraid to turn around and notice stuff your body does. If it looks weird or smells weird, it might BE weird.

I have been ‘too busy’ to exercise, because I work from home, because I run my own business, because I have more work than there are hours in the day, because there is housework to be done, food to be made and dishes to be washed – I am too busy.

The muscle in the corner of my mouth got a bit of a workout at Chippy Cheerleader, and as I thought about what she said, I couldn’t find a snide remark to fling at the screen – odd, for me. She’s right, you know, if you’re too busy to work out, you’re too freakin busy. I’m also too poor to get sick, and too busy to die because I don’t take care of my body.

“Too busy” means you have either taken on too much responsibility in your day-to-day life, or you are wasting time, somehow. Some of us may do both.

If you are too busy, think about the ‘empty’ moments in your day. Like empty calories, there are moments in our day that are wasted. For fear of sounding like Seven of Nine, I won’t say they are moments spent inefficiently, but those minutes you spend getting distracted by ‘yo mama’ jokes that caught your eye on yahoo answers, or that you spend futzing in the bathroom, or just taking up space because your brain just refuses to work are ‘empty’ minutes. Now take all those minutes and combine them into a little package of 10? 20? 30? 60? minutes, and treat yourself to some exercise time. Now, you’ll be faced with a different kind of schedule, because you are scheduling time for yourself, and you won’t have time to waste on those empty moments. You’re too busy! Follow?

For me, going to the gym to work out is pretty much out. It takes about a half hour to get ready, another half hour to get there, an hour to change, work out, cool down, change, and another half hour to get home – best case scenario. I can’t afford 2.5 hours. It’s easy to know what you can’t do, but what CAN you do? Find a time frame that works for you. Start slowly – I started at 20 minutes, and realized little by little that I could afford an hour, so now, I work out at home for an hour.

Why bother?

All this time manipulation is wasting my time! I don’t have time to think about time spent inefficiently. Why are you wasting my time with this blog entry?!?

I’ll tell you why -

Productivity.
Exercise makes me more productive while I’m working because it gives me the tools to sweat out all those cobwebs that bog me down during the work day.

Sanity.
Sanity is something I’ll take whenever and however I can get it.  Exercising gives me ‘quiet time’, or time to think, to come up with some quasi-brilliant ideas. Maybe it gives me time away from my desk, to find solutions to challenges we’re faced with on some project at work. Maybe I find inspiration to make my life more efficient, somehow… or maybe it just gives me some private time to get on the dance floor with Lady Gaga.

Energy.
Exercising helps me find my energy. There’s more energy in my body when it weighs a little less, and sweats a little more.

Life.
When I’m more productive and have more time to do the things I enjoy, have a little more grip on my sanity with some energy to spare at the end of the day, life is a better place for all involved. Exercise improves quality of life, guaranteed, or your money back.

Far be it from me to preach about taking time out for yourself, but I know that it IS possible, even though we feel we have no time. One of my life’s heroes works 2 jobs, for 14, 16 or 18 hours a day, but still finds time to run every morning.

If you’ve read this far, you can identify with some of the things I’ve written here.  The next time you find your schedule crammed from morning till night, remind yourself that if you don’t have time to exercise, you’re too busy – find a way to make time for yourself and for exercise.

So we all have our weaknesses. Mine is Reeces (I know, it’s ReeSes – but Kaity isn’t reading so it doesn’t matter), and ice cream. Last night I was feeling all PMSy and after a long hard day – even though I KNEW my cravings were rooted in the whole ‘emotional eating’ thing, I said screw it and had a bowl of ice cream with a Reeces chaser. So I blew it? Naw. I just shouldn’t do that again for another really long while. And I should step back and think about it for a second, or a blog.

Why? Because!

Habit has been one of my challenges with weight gain. I remember growing up, we always had Entenmanns cake in the house, and always had dessert after dinner. When I say dessert, I don’t mean fruit or something healthy. I mean cake, cookies, or ice cream. I saw that as a good thing – that we had enough to afford dessert, that we always had ‘treats’ in the house. When I moved out on my own, I continued that tradition of dessert after dinner, oftentimes with dessert being motivation to get through dinner. I developed a habit of eating sweets daily. It dawned on me soon after that I could be reckless once in a while and skip dinner altogether! Soon enough, I was eating a pint of Haagen Dazs for dinner every night.

I deserve this.

Emotional eating has probably been THE biggest contributor to my weight problems. I can remember getting a dollar from my dad after church on Sunday, and running to the corner deli on Woodward with my friend to get Bon Bons. It was a treat! I learned that food was a reward, and just like another bad habit I developed later on, smoking, when I felt like being good to myself after a hard day, etc., I’d treat myself to (xyz food that’s bad for you).

That plate of cookies doesn’t love you.

I read that somewhere, and it made me laugh a little at myself, in a sad sorta way. One of the things that helped me ‘last time around’, when I lost … 60 lbs, was learning to treat myself to other things that weren’t food (or cigarettes – but that was another vice, for another blog!).

So, what to do… The first thing you have to do is realize that you’re going to feel just as shitty after you eat that bowl of ice cream as you do right now, if not worse because you know it’s not helping your weight.  That ice cream is not going to make your problems go away, your bank account bigger, your house cleaner, or your weight problem disappear. Think about it before you even take that bowl out of the cabinet. “Do I really want this?” Stop eating mindlessly, and for crying out loud stop letting your emotion lead you around your kitchen.

Be nice.

Learn to do nice things for yourself like, take a bubble bath. Paint your nails. Shave your legs without making haste to get out of the shower (hey, for me that’s normally reserved for luxury days). Give yourself ten minutes to read, or just surf the net if that’s what you enjoy doing and don’t get to do it often. Treat yourself to anything that’s not food related – and do this consistently. Like Pavlov’s dog, you’ll start changing your response when you feel like treating yourself, and you’ll stop turning to food. It takes practice – I know that sounds weird, but when you have these ideas so ingrained in who you are, it takes time to change them.

When all else fails, because sometimes you’re going to have a bad PMSy night (guys too!), don’t waste energy beating yourself over the head after you’ve indulged.  Just recognize that it wasn’t the best idea, and make a conscious decision to stay away from that kind of stuff now.

Well, I didn’t say exactly that, but something similar. I was suspicious about my thyroid possibly being slow and causing my inability to lose weight – or more like, my constant creeping up of poundage over the last few months (years) since I stopped going to the gym.

Do you see the humor in that?

Hmm, let me think, must be something to blame for me gaining all this weight since I stopped going to the gym…but what could it beeee?  Hmmmm…

Sounds like the beginning of a children’s anecdotal story with an all-too-clear (at least to adults) moral, doesn’t it?

Needless to say my blood test came back normal, and my thyroid was just fine, thank you very much — “Now get off your ass and DO something about it,” the nurse said when I called for results.  Well, not really, but life is funnier as it happens in my head.

Anyone who knows Kait, or has read her story, knows that she has lost over 105 pounds since she started her weight loss journey about 5 years ago. Now you may agree that losing 100 pounds in a few years is pretty amazing, but the truth is she would have lost it faster had she known about, and had been addressing her thyroid problem.

A slow thyroid can wreak all kinds of havoc in your body. It’s super important to find out if you have any medical conditions that might be slowing you down, or keeping you at a standstill when you’re trying to lose weight. At least I know I have nobody to blame but myself if the pounds keep packing on, or if I don’t peel them off.

Off, to do something!

Nothing you try (hi carbs, low carbs, low fat, low calories, fat burners, exhaustive workouts) seems to work anymore. The weight just isn’t coming off, or worst yet maybe you’re gaining weight. You see a doctor and everything checks out fine. There’s no reason you shouldn’t be losing weight.

To say it’s frustrating is an understatement. You’re left in an endless cycle and getting nowhere for all of your hard work.

What if I told you, the problem may be that you’ve damaged your metabolism? This is a very real problem caused by prolonged dieting. It’s actually a very common thing to happen with so many people trying to lose weight with extremely low-calorie diets and hours of cardio.

It may sound bad, but it really isn’t as bad as you may think. It’s not permanent and actually it’s fairly simple to repair your slow metabolism. Your metabolism slows down which is normal in response to eating less calories than your body requires.

The body actually physically adapts in response to eating low calories in such a way that the hormones which control your metabolic rate responds in an effort to preserve body fat. This can cause you to think you need to eat fewer calories which only causes your metabolism to slow even more.

So how do you fix this? First it is very critical that you stop thinking short term and start thinking long term.

It may be difficult to accept as it goes against all you have come to believe, but you need to eat more for a little while. I know! But speaking from personal experience, this is necessary. This is also where a little faith and patience come in. Instead of just jumping right in and upping your caloric intake, I suggest taking it a little at a time in well thought out and regular increases. By doing it this way, you allow your body to adjust or get used to eating more food, so you hopefully don’t regain some fat and maybe even lose some fat. One way of doing this is gradually increase your calories by 10 or 20% every few days until you reach your maintenance caloric level.

What is your maintenance level? It is approximately somewhere around 14x bodyweight. It may be a bit lower depending on how severe your caloric deficit has been and how long you have been dieting.

Once you’ve adjusted your caloric intake to maintenance levels, you will need to stay at this level for at least two weeks to give your body a chance to adjust. You will need to be very consistent with no cheating. Then once leveled out, you can return to a caloric deficit. You may gain some weight during this maintenance period but don’t worry about it! You’re body is adjusting and it’s most likely water, muscle glycogen, etc. Nothing to worry about. This is when you have to remind yourself to think in the long term rather than the short term. You need to fix the problem before you can move beyond it.

The purpose of the two weeks of maintenance calories isn’t to maintain; to reset your system so your subsequent caloric deficit is more effective at fat loss. Basically, this is supercharging your metabolism.

When you return to a caloric deficit, once again don’t just drop your calories. Use the same method as you did when raising your calories to maintenance level. This time make your goal caloric intake approximately 12x bodyweight. Maintain this level for a couple of weeks, assess your progress and make adjustments as needed. If you’re getting leaner, stay there. If you’re not, try decreasing your calories by another 10% and maintain for two weeks and reassess your progress.

Please remember, these are just an approximation to give you a starting point. Everyone is different so your progress will be different. Again, being able to reassess your program and make adjustments is the key to long term success.

It is very important you keep track of what you eat and how you’re progress is going. If what you’re doing isn’t getting you results, you need to be flexible and make adjustments. Planning period maintenance phases are key to maintaining a healthy metabolism and continued fat loss.