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By planning ahead and making a conscience effort to stick to your plan, you will find that once you reach your weight loss goal, you will stay there. No more yo-yoing up and down. No more losing then gaining, then having to lose again. With planning you can lose the weight once and keep ot off.
Any weight loss effort or plan is a change in your lifestyle. Most people are resistant to change and prefer things as they are.

It really does not matter whether or not you are planning low carb, South Beach, or simply reducing your calories, make certain that you have the tools you need. Your number one priority is to get a reliable scale. A digital readout is best, as you can see it clearly from a standing position. And you don’t have to guess whether you weigh 130 pounds, 129 pounds or 131, the readout will tell you.

You will also need a tape measure (get a new one if the one that you have is stretched or very old. They are very inexpensive). Sometimes you will notice that the scale doesn’t budge but you’re still losing inches. Measure yourself around your chest or bust line, your waist, stomach and buttocks. You can also measure each thigh. Those body parts have the most fat deposits. Upper arms can get flabby as well, but it’s more difficult to measure around your arms accurately by yourself. You will also need to measure the same way each time. if you have a tendency to let the tape measure get pulled tight - remember that. What you don’t want is to measure tight one time and loosely the next or the other way around. Your measurement will be more accurate and you’ll be able to see your results better by spending time when you measure.

A daily journal is important and not just for keeping track of what you eat. You can make notes of how you feel and see if you’re binging when you’re upset. Tracking your exercise progress, noting your weight and your measurements on a weekly basis will give you a feeling of progress. Some people will purchase a fancy journal for this purpose so that your entries are going into a special place and it might make you be more apt to continue to use the journal. Others who are on a budget can just pick up a spiral notebook in the school supply section of their favorite discount store and use that. Just remember to use it.

One tip is to highlight when you’ve had a particularly hard or easy day so that you can come back later on and easily see what works and what doesn’t work for you.

If your weight loss hits a plateau you can look at your journal and see if you’ve been slipping up, either by eating too much, had a special ocassion come up or or not exercising enough.

The next step is to set your personal weight loss goal. “Trying to lose some weight,” is a way to failure. Don’t “try.” Do it. If your goal is more than a few pounds, give yourself a reasonable amount of time to accomplish it. Headlines that scream LOSE 7 LBS THIS WEEKEND are meant to sell magazines and are not a realistic goals. To lose one pound of fat you have to either burn off 3500 calories or eat 3500 calories less than what your body requires. The average person needs 2000 calories a day. Of course if you’re very active or very sedate your calorie needs will vary. If you cut 500 calories from your daily consumption you can expect to lose one pound a week – 500 calories a day times 7 days equals 3500.

Increase your exercise by 250 calories a day in addition to cutting calories and your weight loss goal would be 1.5 pounds a week or 6 to 7 pounds a month. Now this may not sound like much but remember that we are losing the weight just one time and the weight that you are losing will mainly be fat, not water weight or muscle.

If you need to lose 25 pounds it will take you about 4 months - now that doesn’t sound to bad at all. That’s several pant sizes!. That rate of weight loss is safe and the weight should stay off, if you stick with it. Once you see how you look and you re-read all of your frustrations in your daily journal you’ll be less apt to blow your plan and regain your weight..
Write down a weekly target weight on your calendar.

Now you’re not “trying to lose weight,” you’re actively pursuing your goal.

Do you believe that all calories are created equal? You have probably heard the phrase ” a calorie is a calorie” and you are lead to believe that one calorie is just the same as another. However, you eat is just as important as how much you eat.

If you look at this scientifically - a calorie is a unit of energy, it is defined as how much heat is required to raise one gram of water one degree Celsius. So you’d think that as long as you reducet your calorie consumption below what your body requires to sustain itself, you would lose weigh.

If this were true, then for every 3500 calories you cut from your diet (or burn through physical movement) you should lose one pound of fat. It shouldn’t matter what you eat.

Although part of this is true it really is a bit more complicated than that.

When you lose a pound of weight you also lose muscle mass and water. The scale would show as much as five pounds of weight loss and you’ve only lost one pound of fat. As soon as you resume your normal eating the water weight comes right back on. The lost muscle is more difficult to replace. Since muscle requires more energy than fat you don’t want to lose muscle.

One problem with severely cutting back on calories is when the diet is over and you return to your normal eating, the lost muscle means you’re burning fewer calories than before you went on the diet. It’s easier to gain the weight back.

The calories in a piece of decadent cake might equal those in a 3 oz serving of baked chicken and a helping of steamed broccoli, so it shouldn’t matter which one you eat. Right? Wrong! The answer is simple. The cake has no redeeming nutritional value and will be converted to glucose (sugar in your system) quite quickly. The rush of glucose into your blood stream will trigger insulin production. The insulin converts the glucose to energy for your body and what’s not immediately needed is stored as fat. What’s worse is your blood sugar drops quickly and you get hungry. Think of it this way - that piece of cake to fat in 30 minutes flat.

The chicken and broccoli have vitamins and nutrients your body needs. Protein takes longer to convert to glucose because your digestive system has to work harder. The glucose enters your blood stream at a steady rate rather than in a rush like the brownie. Less insulin is produced and less glucose is converted and stored as fat. As a bonus you won’t be hungry as fast.

Decreasing the amount of food you eat by counting calories is just a part of a successful weight loss plan. What you eat is just as important as how much you eat.