Want to lose weight? Use Ink.

When I think back to the thousands of people that I have helped lose weight or my own accomplishments in this area; it is easy to acknowledge the greatest tool in this endeavor is not sets, reps, compound exercises, functional training, late night infomercials or one of the ten thousand diets out there. It is so old school that it is completely overlooked..  It's a pen. 

Yes, that's correct. You can punish your body for five hours a day but you will lose more weight by simply writing down the calories you take in and the calories you burn.  

The act of writing down with pen or paper, or if you're tech savvy a digital substitute, what you put in your mouth will give you an immediate pause to if you really, really need to put something in your mouth. Especially later in the day when our mental energy's are low, our willpower siphoned off from dozens of interactions at work and circular nonsensical conversations with kids or the adult equivalent. Based on unconscious habit, we often don't even realize we are eating or overeating. The process of being accountable to those eating actions will eventually cause you reconsider your habits. You ask yourself, "Do I really need to eat all that,"  "Do I really need to this candy/ice cream/bar/drink."

Conversely if you have the ability to track the calories you expend either in daily metabolic rationing or through exercise using a heart rate monitor or pedometer, you can list those expenditures as an asset and subtract them from your daily intake. Thankfully technology creates a multitude of gadgets to do this in your daily life at an affordable price. When you write down the exercise(s) you perform your more apt to stick to a plan. It may be more comfortable to sit on the couch for thirty minutes but in that amount of time, the viewing of a sitcom, you could run two miles or more and done far more good for yourself. 

Furthermore, you can be as high tech or low tech as you see fit. Portability is the key.  For twenty years I have used food journals either bought or self made, paper and digital based, with all kinds of line items and boxes for plugging in specific information for portion size, calories, and percentages of protein, carbohydrate or fat. None have really kept me as engaged as a small notepad that I can write what I want and how I want it. I couldn't tell you how many times at the end of the day I pulled scraps of paper from my pocket to enter into a spreadsheet or larger binder and it just felt tedious. 

So I keep it easy; energy in, energy out. What is my Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) for the day, or calories burned if I basically schlep through the day and don't gain or lose any weight. This is a constant. Then I start adding the calories that I eat and if I exercise I subtract the calories I burn. The goal is to be at or under my BMR at the end of the day. To lose weight a person would factor a number of calories to be less than at the end of the day. For example to lose one pound per week you would want to be deficit 500 calories each day for seven days which equals 3,500 calories or 1 pound. 

If you are truly interested in losing weight, pick up a pen before a dumbbell. It is the most consistently productive way to lose weight quickly.