The word diet is enough to make someone completely scared out of their mind! We often think about eating food that we don’t like, giving up our favorites, and having to take part in boring exercise. Your diet though should be more of a lifestyle change though and not something you do for a few weeks or months. Typically a diet should help you to lose from 1 to 2 pounds per week. If you are losing more than that, it isn’t a healthy plan to follow.

Females shouldn’t consume less than 1,200 calories per day. Males shouldn’t consume less than 1,500 calories per day. By eating less than this the body will slow down its metabolism. This means it is going to store more of what you eat as fat. That is why people feel that they eat less and less but don’t lose weight so the get frustrated.

Counting calories can help you to make very good choices. What you will find is that there is a big difference in certain foods. You can use calorie counters online to help you get portion sizes and numbers. For example consuming a fast food burger, fries, and drink can be over 1,000 calories. However, you can eat a chicken breast, vegetables, and salad for about 500 calories and feel full for a longer period of time.

Avoid fad diets that restrict the types of foods that you can consume. It is a good idea to create a menu and then to shop for food for a week or longer at once. Try to include plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables in your diet. By doing so you will be able to stay satisfied between meals and they are low calorie. Watch out for drinks though as they often have empty calories. A latte drink for example can have 500 or more calories in it!

The next step is to include a great exercise plan for your diet. If you haven’t been active for awhile then you need to start out slow. You can use calculators online that will show you how many calories you burn doing certain types of exercises. You can subtract that from your calories intake to see what your daily remaining value is.

In case you are wondering, you have to burn 3,500 calories to burn 1 pound of fat. If you are able to cut your calories down daily and increase what you burn through exercise though you will see those numbers adding up fast. You can create a spreadsheet that helps you to keep track of your efforts for an entire month. Then you will be able to see where you are doing well and what you need to change.

Exercise should be fun so try some things that work well for you. Don’t spend a ton of money a gym membership if you won’t go there. You can do easy workouts at home, playing with the kids, going hiking, and more. Find things that you enjoy doing so that you will feel motivated to continue with them instead of like working out is a punishment.