The Plan

Many of us try this dieting thing without really learning about our bodies, the food we eat, and how physical fitness plays a part in our overall health. Approaching any kind of fitness regime unarmed is setting you up for failure.
What you need is a little education and a plan.
For a little starter on understanding how your body reacts to the food you give it read my previous post here.
For now, lets focus on a plan.  This plan needs to include counting your calories.  And don't give me this line that you don't have time to count all this up. You obviously have time to stuff your tummy with whatever you want. 
I was like this for years. One day, I just had the thought that if I can set around and eat crap, junk food, all day, then I can get up off my lazy butt and go workout.  Psst: I don't want my kids to have to take care of a beached whale. I want them to be proud of me instead.  
So, if you are ready to face that truth, keep reading.
What's this plan look like? We won't over-complicate things, okay. Take the time to go back and read my previous post about our body and the foods we eat. This will set up your mind for tracking. 
Grab a decent calendar or if you are creative, fix one up online.  You want to track some basic things and if you have to follow a doctor recommended diet, you'll need to include that as well.
Basically, what you want to keep track of is calories, fat calories, and carbs. You'll need to educate yourself on reading food labels. Learn some options to reduce or eliminate all forms of sugars. And don't get bent out of shape over this. Before long, you'll be able to know what's in the food you eat and control your portion sizes accordingly. 
On your ordinary, daily calendar, just write in your calories and carbs. Ladies, if you want to make this really fun, go to Mardels and snatch up one of those beautiful planners and select an assortment of stickers to make tracking all these things fun. I use a planner from Mardels, but I also include stickers from The Happy Planner series. The Happy Planner has planners available and they've recently come out with some fabulous fall stickers. 
Here's the planner I use from Mardels. Scroll down to the 5th line, 2nd one from the left. It's a beautiful light grey with pinkish flowers. I love my planner.
It really doesn't matter how you keep track of what you eat, what matters is that you just do it. If you follow a keto way of eating, make sure that 80% of your calories come from the good fat twins mono and poly unsaturated fats and that you keep your carbs at least below 50 grams a day. For some, you may need to drop to 20 grams a day. 
Take note, don't just drop your carbs and not take in a sufficient amount of the fat twins, you'll find yourself without mental clarity and focus, energy, you'll want to crawl back in bed so be careful. If you get this low, without going into ketosis (the process where your body uses ketones to burn stored fat on your body by allowing your liver to rid itself of stored sugars called glycogens) your body won't have sufficient energy to fight off common colds or other illnesses. And this time of year is especially important to keeping a strong track of your calories and carbs. For an extra benefit, grab yourself some vitamin D3.  We have a flu season because it's the time of year when our earth turns just enough away from the sun. Strengthen your immune system with vitamin D3 this year.
If you've been encouraged to track your performance, please share with me and help motivate others. I'd love to hear your story.
Talk soon,
Alexia