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There is one important component of My Weight Loss Plan that I haven’t discussed yet: a day off.

Watching what you eat can be stressful. Not eating foods you love (like chocolate) is also stressful. You long for those foods, and it starts to drive you crazy. You go to a party and you have to watch what you eat. It drives you crazy. What’s the solution?

Take a day off from trying to lose weight.

That’s right, one day per week ignore your diet, your exercise rules, and everything else. Have fun, eat what you want.

Does this mean you should spend the day going on an ice cream and fried foods binge? No, that’s not what I’m suggesting. What I am suggesting is that you take a day and not worry about food or exercise. If you want to eat a chocolate bar, fine, do it. If you want to eat a bag of potato chips fine, eat away. This strategy serves two purposes.

First, it satisfies your craving for whatever it is you want. You get it out of your system, without feeling guilty, so you can get back to your weight loss plan tomorrow.

Second, as your body adjusts to eating correctly, you will probably find that pigging out on the garbage you used to eat is not nearly as satisfying as it once was. Your cravings are reduced, because you don’t crave that food anymore. And that’s good.

So take a day off, and then get back to it tomorrow.

Well, I have now finished the first week of My Weight Loss Plan. How did I do?

Quite well, actually, thanks for asking.

I started the week at 198 pounds, and today I weighed in at 194.5 pounds, for a loss of 3.5 pounds on the week. I of course realize that some of that loss is water weight, but I’m happy; I wanted to lose weight, and that’s what I did.

How did I do it?

First, I gave up carbs for breakfast. Every morning I ate eggs (you can read my egg post for more details). For lunch and dinner I ate a lot of vegetables and chicken and salads. There are lots of things you can do with those foods, so it wasn’t boring at all.

Second, I did a moderate amount of exercise. During the week I went for one 30 minute walk, I did one cardio session (30 minutes of walking and jogging on my Precor 9.33 treadmill). I also did two twenty minute weight training sessions.

Why only 20 minutes each? Because I knew, since I’m just getting back into it, my muscles would be tired and would need time to recover, so I didn’t want to over do it.

Also, one problem with exercise is that it makes you hungry, so I wanted to exercise enough to get the benefit of exercise, but not so much I just had to eat more to satisfy my hunger. (I’m using the Turbulence Training concepts discussed here earlier).

Week one was a success, let’s see how we do in Week #2.

I’m now on day #3 of my weight loss plan, and today I want to talk about exercise. We all agree that exercise is good, because it helps burn calories and it makes you feel better.

However, I have found that it’s not easy to use exercise to lose weight. As discussed in my article on the 3,500 calorie weight loss challenge, a pound of fat is the equivalent of about 3,500 calories, meaning you need to burn 3,500 calories to lose a pound of fat. That may sound easy, but it isn’t. You would need to walk for seven and a half hours to burn 3,500 calories. That’s not easy.

My point: you cannot rely on exercise alone to lose weight. It is far easier to cut 3,500 calories out of your diet than it is to walk for seven plus hours!

The other problem with exercise is that it makes you hungry! Your body burns calories, which makes you hungry, so you want to eat more. If your eating increases by the same amount of calories you just burned, you won’t lose any weight! It’s simple math.

That doesn’t mean exercise is bad. With exercise your heart gets stronger, you sleep better, and you feel better. But you don’t necessarily lose weight.

So, what’s my plan? I plan to do limited exercise. I want the maximum “bang for the buck”, so I’m not going to walk for seven hours. I am going to do resistance training, also known as weight training.

Weight training can be done in a relatively short period of time (30 minutes two or three times per week), and it’s effective because it helps you build muscle. We all know that muscle weighs more than fat, because it’s more dense, but muscle also needs more energy to grow and survive. Energy is another word for calories, and it’s a simple equation: the more muscle mass you have, the more calories you burn, even when you are not exercising!

Research Turbulence Training.

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I plan to use the strategy developed by Craig Ballantyne in his revolutionary Turbulence Training System, where you can lose fat while gaining muscle with just three short (but intense) workouts each week. Mr. Ballantyne is a world-renowned Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist (CSCS), and author articles in magazines such as Men’s Health, Men’s Fitness, Oxygen, Maximum Fitness, and Muscle and Fitness Hers. Â

The Turbulence Training System is designed to burn fat in the least amount of time. It takes some work, but I believe the results will be worth it. (For more information, click here to read more about Turbulence Training.)

My plan is to do 30 minutes of high intensity weight training two or three times per week to build muscle mass, burn calories, but not work out so much that I just increase my hunger levels. Check back to see how it works.

Yesterday I talked about my plan to lose weight, and I said that as part of My Weight Loss Plan I am going to eat eggs. Here’s what I mean:

To lose weight, I want to keep my carbohydrate intake low, and focus only on good carbs. Therefore, during the week, I’m going to skip having cereal for breakfast, which is high in carbs and sugar, and replace cereal with eggs, which are high in protein.

Today for breakfast I took one whole egg, and three egg whites. (I buy the egg whites separately; it’s easy, and I’m not wasting the egg yolks. I like one whole egg for flavor, and the egg whites for volume with fewer calories.) Today I chopped up some fresh spinach, some feta cheese, and some black olives.

I mixed the egg and egg whites, poured them into a frying pan coated with olive oil, and made an omelette. Once cooked enough to allow for flipping, I flip in over and dump on the spinach, cheese and black olives. I fold it over, and put the pan to the side of the stove for one minute (I don’t want the eggs to cook so much they get rubbery, but I want the spinach limp and the cheese somewhat melted).

Then it’s put it on a plate and eat.

How hard is this? It’s easy, because I do most of the preparation the night before. I chop the spinach, feta cheese, and black olives and put them in a Ziploc container, so in the morning all I need to do is dump them on.

One word of caution: I find that with this diet I need to nd drink lots of water to counter balance the salt in the olives and the cheese, and to keep me regular.

Tomorrow, some thoughts on exercise.

It’s been a while since I’ve posted any comments about My Weight Loss Plan, so here’s the update: I was doing well for a while, but I’ve slipped back into bad habits. As of today I weigh 198 pounds; I’m a 43 year old male, 5 feet 11 inches tall, so a more appropriate weight for me would be around 178 pounds, which means I need to lose 15 or 20 pounds.

My peak weight was 205 pounds, and I managed to lose about 25 pounds on the Atkins Diet, but I didn’t stick with it, so obviously now some of the weight has returned. I also need to spend more effort on exercise.

So, here’s my plan:

I am going to focus on slow carbs, not no carbs. During the week I’ll skip the cereal and eat eggs instead (tomorrow I’ll post what I mean by that). I’ll eat lots of vegetables and proteins, and avoid anything white (white bread, pasta, etc.). I will avoid all deserts, and drink lots of water.

Also, I’m going to start exercising; I’ll post my thoughts on that in two days time, so check back for more details, and wish me luck.