Tracking Weight - How to Make Consistent Progress
A young lady suprised about how much progress she’s made in only 1 month!
When you wish to shift your weight, there is one thing that will need to change - Your total intake of calories. If you aren’t counting your calories and do not wish to, then you have a few different options here.
How to Lose Weight Without Tracking Calories
Whatever the portions you’re having now, reduce them. Fat (9 calories per gram) and alcohol (7 calories per gram) are the most calorically dense with Protein (4 calories per gram) and Carbs (4 calories per gram) coming in the least.
Change the Alcohol, Juice, or Any High-Calorie Beverage or Reduce the Amount Consumed Each Week
Having a glass of wine with dinner at the end of a long week is nice. If you typically have 2, try 1. If you have a glass every day, try every other day and replace the glass with sparkling water or another low-calorie option instead. If that’s ew, a half glass per day is also acceptable. Do you see where I’m going here? It takes understanding your habits to change your composition.
Reduce the Fats
A salad with cheese, olives, nuts, and an oil-based dressing with a fatty protein - these all include high fats. Limit or replace to reduce the overall calorie intake of your salad. Choose between olives, nuts, or cheese. Opt for a leaner protein and maybe go with a balsamic vinaigrette instead. A mix of olive oil and balsamic is also a common option. This could take your salad from over 1000 calories to 500-700 and you get to keep the healthy fats and proteins. This is important for you to feel full.
Make things simple by replacing all carbs with vegetables and fruits.
Frozen, canned, or fresh. Potatoes are extremely filling. You can still cook them in a fat and put some on top (since you’re saving so many calories from all those processed carbs) but keep this added fat under wraps. 1 tablespoon will go a long way plus each added tablespoon of olive oil is 119 calories. It only takes around a 500 calorie deficit every day to lose weight. The extra tablespoon could mean your progress.
Replace Your Fatty Meats with Leaner Ones
Instead of the cheaper burger, go for the leaner one or replace it with turkey burger. Instead of chicken thighs, get the chicken breasts. Instead of the pork loin, get the pork tenderloin.
Life is too short not to enjoy the flavors
I get it. These changes won’t be forever and it’s much healthier for you to keep healthy fats in your diet. But if you’re uncomfortable at your current weight or you want to be at a healthier body fat percentage then make some changes for the next 6 months and reassess.
Once you hit your desired outcome with weight loss, head back up to your maintenance calories. Yes, it’s common to gain a few pounds when eating more food. Just keep an eye on yourself, or the scale in this instance. The more food we eat, the more we weigh naturally. That doesn’t mean you just added 3 lbs of fat to your body. It typically means you’ve added some extra water weight that fluctuates with carb intake. If you continue to go up in weight consistently, you’ve passed your maintenance threshold.
Side note on weight in general
If you’ve been the same weight for a long period of time, like 6 months to a year, then congratulations. It is progress to maintain weight, of course when you don’t plan to. Now you can take this baseline and keep track of your weight as you change your food intake. Change one thing and see what happens after 1 month. Typically after a month, you’ll be much more comfortable with this change and you can then add something else if you’d like to continue the trend you’re on. It’s important to not overwhelm yourself with too many changes right away. We all love a good reason to give up.
For example:
I change my typical beef burger tacos to turkey burger. I like to have tacos all the time but I understand others like variety so I try to keep taco prep to once every other week (because it lasts all week).
After one month, I notice I’ve lost a total of 2lbs. My weight fluctuated up and down, but the important note is where I currently am today. This is great news! I didn’t need to change much and the taste of turkey burger tacos is something I’ve grown to love and learned how to flavor. I’m ready to make another change!
Next, I change the wraps I use with my tacos. The ones I get are around 200 calories a piece. These other ones from Xtreme wellness has them at 50 calories per wrap! Same size and all! I’m in.
It’s been a month of eating these turkey burger tacos with the low calorie wrap. My weight has gone down 1lb making me sit at a total of 3lbs down. How exciting! This wrap isn’t as sturdy, but I’ve learned how to pack it so that it still gets everything I like inside it. I’m ok with this wrap. I’m ready for some more change!
Now I love sour cream in my tacos. A good bit of it too. I really don’t want to mess with the ratio of meat to cream so I opt for a replacement instead. Full fat plain greek yogurt has much less calories (it actually turns out to have 1 calorie per gram) than sour cream (it’s nearly 200 calories for just 100 grams so almost double the calories) and way more protein. If you’re looking for something to fill you up and keep your calories lower, protein is the way to go. With this switch to greek yogurt, I’m now receiving an extra 16grams of protein where I’d only get about 4 or less grams of protein with sour cream.
With these few changes to my taco days, which are plentiful, I’ve already saved HUNDREDS of calories. I didn’t even change the portion size, only replaced the foods that made up my taco. And you can take this even further with any meal. Or just keep it this way if it allows you to continue losing weight.
It’s all About Balance
I’m not saying the foods I switched with are better overall than the others. I for sure still consume sour cream, beef burger and regular wraps. It’s only when I want to change my weight to something less than for whatever reason that I choose these lighter options. For now, I prefer greek yogurt in my tacos so I can hit my protein goals way easier than if I ate sour cream. I prefer the lower-calorie wraps so I can load up on my favorite goat cheese.
There’s a time and a place for everything. We need to understand balance. Taking notes of where your weight goes every week, day or month is important to understand your progress. If the changes you make aren’t benefiting you, then scrap them and try again with something else.
