get started

Goals & the Want to Do It

The motivation and the want to do it is vital to success in any venture. You must promise yourself that you want to lose weight, and you will take steps towards losing weight, but not all in the first month. Weight loss is a longer term goal, over a few months. Maintaining a healthy weight and body is a lifelong achievement which will start here with your commitment to this program and, hopefully, using what you have gained and learned by starting to lose weight will become a permanent plan leading to life changing health and nutrition habits.

If you are continually putting on unwanted weight, you obviously know about this or else you would not be reading this. You also know that you will have to put steps into place to change the habits that are contributing to this increase. Habits are learned through repetition, so the key to convincing your brain to moderate what you eat every day is going to require some forced repetition.

Weight gain is a very current topic. Did you know that obesity has doubled in children in the USA since the Covid-19 pandemic began, and the horrible part about it is that most parents are unaware of the phenomenon. It has come about while children have been unable to go outdoors, or to school, or to partake in sports and exercise. Adults, too, have become much less active over the pandemic years and weight gain is leading to health issues.

This will increase the demand on already strained health systems. Obesity in the USA due to Covid-19 isolation will ultimately be responsible for more deaths than Covid-19 itself.

Steps in the Right Direction

Steps taken, however small, towards reducing your body weight, losing unnecessary fat and becoming more healthy are going in the right direction. Start by getting to know what food your body needs for fuel every day. This information, together with knowing your actual food intake, will allow you to become more conscious of what you are eating at all times.

Setting a realistic, attainable goal is the best way to start. Remember - you did not put all the extra weight on in one month, so don't try and take it all off in one month! A reasonable initial goal is to lose 100g per day, which is very realistic and attainable.

Metric Measurements:

If you aim to lose 100 g per day, on average, that equates to approximately 3 kgs per month. You need to burn off 7,700 calories to lose 1 kilogram of body fat, so our +/-100g per day goal is well within reach for the long term.

Imperial Measurements:

In general, to lose 1 to 2 lbs per week is medically acceptable for most people. 5 lbs per week would be an aggressive, unrealistic, and potentially unhealthy weight-loss goal. If you set your goal and stick to your plan, you will definitely get there in a healthy way. Also, as you near your weight loss goals you will feel more positive and encouraged to keep going as you see your weight decreasing over time.

We will now move into the Information Gathering stage of The Alternate Diet.

1. Discovering the Current Trend - Weight

The first thing we need to do is establish the impact of current nutrition ie. how you fuel your body at present, what is the result of this, etc.

This is important in order to establish a trend of how things are at the moment. Then, once the Alternate Diet principles are implemented, you will be able to see the divergence from the trend and a new, downward trend emerge.

It is recommended that you monitor your current trend for 2 weeks, before calculating your new requirements and implementing the Alternate Diet to go forward.

The first scale we will need is obviously the common bathroom scale, however there are some Smart Scales out there that even measure Body Fat for you. Some of them also have a blue tooth connection, allowing you to link the information to your smart phone.

You will need to do this to start to monitor your trend and progress. You may already have the information, but please check that it is being recorded in the correct way, to set yourself up for success.

Weigh yourself at the same time every day. The best time is just after you wake up.

Ensuring you weigh yourself at the same time every day ensures that results are consistent, but also that it becomes a daily habit that you won’t forget.

Make sure that results are recorded securely. The facility to graph your results means that you will be able to see and track your trend, going forward.

2. Your Daily Requirements - Body Mass Index

The next information we need is your own specific BMI figure which stands for Body Mass Index. You will only need this figure once.

Your Body Mass Index, or BMI, is actually just the relationship of your weight to your relative height - that’s all. No big issue and it is simple to calculate. This standardized measure, that you can ascertain yourself, provides a reference to a world standard. For more information on the BMI, its development and use, you will find additional references at the end of this book where you will find the full details of the standard and the formulae for how it is calculated.

Your BMI value will change according to how much weight you have lost. See below for the range we are pitching for ie. Normal Weight, a BMI of 18.5 to 24.9.

You will find the BMI Calculator here in the Members Area.

The Membership Area is a good place to discover your BMI and that is why you should maintain your Subscription to The Alternate Diet. This commitment to keeping track of your position and trend allows you to persist towards reaching your Goals.

Our next step is to Set those Goals.