My diet is a standard American diet but I restrict my calories using the www.MyFitnessPal.com calorie tracking app. on my smartphone. This app has helped me to lose over 50 lbs. over the years, and keep it off over the past two years. I highly recommend it for weight loss and maintenance. I do not believe in drinking calories. I stay away from all fruit juices, all pop, diet and regular, and all alcohol. Too many calories. I drink only plain tap water, black coffee and tea without additives and I put milk on my cereal only. This keeps calories to a minimum. I eat only one dessert or gooey snack a day, after dinner, and I figure that into my calorie count.
I believe in exercise every day. I believe in only doing exercise that you enjoy. Myself, I like yoga. I do that for about 35 minutes every night before bed. I also play keyboards every evening for about an hour. That burns calories too. I also take the stairs in my apartment complex every chance I get. Your exercise regime may look different than mine. That’s ok. As long as your’e doing something you enjoy, and your’e doing it every day, that’s what counts.
It’s important to keep counting your calories every day, even after you lose the weight you want. This is for maintenance. Otherwise, all the weight will come piling back on. And it’s also important to continue exercising every day too. Make it a lifestyle. That’s what physically fit people do. They make it a lifestyle. Good luck!
Yeah my family doctor said that I don’t need to see a Nutritionist.
He just said to eat less.
Easier said than done.
Watch your calories on MyFitnessPal.com makes it easier.
Ok thanks I might give it a shot 
Good for you @Wave.
I lost 44lb (20kg) by calorie counting. But after a year calorie counting fatigue set in and I couldn’t maintain the effort. Also I hit a brick wall @2200 calories a day and couldn’t go any lower. So I was stuck anyway. All of this while seeing a dietician.
So the weight started to creep back on.
Out of desperation and to stop the weight gain I went onto the Atkins diet about 2 weeks ago. I’ve already lost 1.5kg. (3.3lb)
So I’ll try Atkins for a year if I can and then maybe revisit calorie counting. Atkins is expensive though. Meat is more expensive than rice and pasta basically.
Everhopeful, I would give calorie counting another try. It’s less expensive and you did lose a lot of weight with it. Ketogenesis is not a healthy state to be in over the long term. And that is what the Atkins diet does to the body.
I love myfitnesspal.com it’s very enlightening. I never knew what things had what calories. I’m starting a new fitness regimen very shortly. I just bought the family a recumbent bike. I can’t wait to get it. I can’t walk right now so this should get me going on exercise, its easy and I like it. I’ve been doing it as a warm up for physical therapy. Now physical therapy is over and I miss it. So what the hell, I bought one. As far as diet goes I’ve been making a half assed attempt to cut calories using myfitnesspal.com as a guide. I’m just keeping my stomach from getting stretched out and maintaining my weight. But I’ll lose when I get the bike, yeah!!!
I prefer using Mfp to track my sodium but I find the user interface pretty cumbersome…
Soooo…
Last week I made a pretty cool little clipboard so that I could speak my foods into it and later past them into Mfp… I like it a lot so far although it only works on Android devices.
Here is a demo, although I found out I can even enter foods in faster tapping the left hand side of the widget…
I sent this to the mfp company and they thought it was really cool and they might try integrating something like it into their app in the future.
I have been searching for a similar clipboard app for iOS but haven’t found one yet quite like mine with the quick voice entry.
Forgot to mention that Mfp tends to really set lousy targets for calories for me… If I net more than 1800 calories a day I will gain weight… My Risperdal really slows down my metabolism a lot.