Sticking to BMR Beats Stupid Fad Diets

Okay, what kind of diet is it this time, eh?

GM, South Beach, Paleo, or whatever... If you can't stick to it for life, I assure you that the weight you lose from going on any of these diets will eventually come back and then some.

How do I know? I've tried all of them and they all worked until I returned to my usual diet.

Let's get real, people. I don't think anyone on earth can eat the same things for a long period of time or can bear the tedium of counting calories or the patience to plan out their meals for an entire week.

The no BS way to go about weight-loss and keeping the weight off, really, is to know how much food you should consume everyday to reach or maintain your ideal weight. 

That is what is called your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) -- which, takes into account not just how much calories you need at rest but also how much calories you need when you take on more than the usual amount of physical activity. 

One's BMR isn't a static number, it can go up or down depending on the amount of physical activity you do. So, if you start doing a lot of exercise or physical work, your BMR will go up. If you slack off or just lie around the whole day, your BMR will go down.

To lose weight, you simply have to take in less calories than your BMR requires or increase your BMR by taking on more physical activities.

Here is a link to a good BMR calculator.

And nope, don't expect results within a week or two. Give yourself at least three months or twelve weeks to see any substantial results. (It took me 13 weeks to shed about 45 pounds.)

There are lots of apps out there that can calculate your BMR as well as help you keep track of your food intake as well as record the amount of calories you burn when you take on any physical activity -- the most usual being walking.

One app I have and use everyday is called Noom Weightloss.

It just makes it easy to keep track of everything... from logging my food intake to tracking of the number of steps I take in a day and how many calories I burned during any kind of exercise. It also tracks your weight loss progress and even projects how many pounds or kilos you will lose give the current trajectory of your weight loss progress.

So, try it out and if you don't like it, there are other weight loss apps that take out a lot of the tedious stuff.