Lose Weight and Get Fit for Life! Welcome to "Tame Your Inner Octopus Boot Camp!"

Welcome to "Tame Your Inner Octopus Boot Camp!"TM We're going to get down to the nitty gritty over the course of the next few weeks and months! You've heard me repeatedly mention the importance of having the right "Mindset" in regards to losing weight and getting fit. Let's take the time now to discuss why it is critical to overall success.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the single most important realization you must have in order to lose weight and get fit permanently or maintain your ideal weight for life is to realize that this is not a diet; it has to become a way of life in order for this to work on a permanent basis. It is not hard and once explained, it can be quite easy to implement into your lifestyle.

Let's take it from the top with this new "Mindset" in place. Here's what you need to know.

The average woman's body needs approximately 1,800 calories a day. This excludes pregnant or nursing women or women with special dietary needs.

The average man's body needs approximately 2,000 calories a day.

Let's stop and think about these estimations. Realistically, if we eat more than our required 1,800 or 2,000 calories that our body needs as fuel on a daily basis, for the most part we can be assured that these extras will be stored as excess fat on our body. Now, doesn't that make perfect sense? Ladies and gentlemen, so much of this is about the numbers. The rest is about incorporating the best foods into this equation.

Please realize, each day, just like a bank account, your starting balance is around 1,800 for a woman or around 2,000 calories for a man. Now you can choose to purchase and eat the healthiest foods in the right amounts or you can eat junk and eat mindlessly like the grabby octopus. It's all up to you and the food choices you make on a daily basis 95% of the time. Just as we value making quality purchases in life with regard to our hard earned money, we can easily make these same type choices in the quality of foods we eat on a daily basis. It's all in how we choose to spend those calories!

It came down to common sense for Sharon, the co-author of Tame Your Inner Octopus and I because we quickly realized that we wanted the biggest bang for our bucks or should I say calories!

We wanted quality over quantity. We wanted to ingest great fuel for our bodies on a 95% basis. Our goal was to set up a healthy eating pattern while sticking to a certain amount of calories each day in weight loss mode and thereafter, once we reached our "goal" weight for life.

It is extremely important, from the beginning, that we take time out to realize how and why we gained 5, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50+ pounds over time. This happens because we are continually going over our daily 1,800 or 2,000 calorie budget!

We're grabbing from all over the place and throughout the day like the grabby Octopus! We need to Tame Our Inner Octopus, stop grabbing, pull in our tentacles and start becoming accountable for everything we put into our mouths! Trust me, it can be an enlightening experience.

This is how we start the process. We begin to write down everything we eat each day as we set up a healthy eating pattern for life. We will get into this further in the next post but for now, you can look up the counts online at any calorie counting website or you can purchase a calorie count book if you don't have one you've purchased in the past.

This way of eating is not a diet! Diets don't work and if they do work, we're doing it with a temporary attitude from the start. That's where the wrong mindset comes in and why diets continually fail us throughout life.

Tame Your Inner Octopus is here to stop that way of thinking and we are here to assist you in setting up a permanent healthy eating and fitness pattern for life. Our goal is as simple as that and we'll provide the necessary tools for you to do so.

So, let's get started. There is no magic way to take weight off but there is a guaranteed way to do so. There's a smart way to lose weight and it comes down to basic facts. Please realize the following:

1) In order to lose weight, you need to create a deficit of calories.

2) It takes 3,500 calories to lose 1 pound.

3) Experts recommend losing between 1 to 2 pounds on a weekly basis.

These facts tell us that we should aim to cut back on our daily intake from the start. We can assume that women who consume approximately 1,800 calories or less a day are not experiencing a continual weight gain over the years. Same scenario for men who stay in the area of 2,000. This tells us that we who have gained excess weight over time, have consumed more calories than our bodies needed. We can also assume that we ate more than our body burned off or needed as fuel. This means that we could simply cut back to 1,800 calories a day and we would probably lose weight over a significant amount of time.

But a guaranteed and faster method would be to simply cut back from our required intake of 1,800 calories for a woman and 2,000 calories daily for a man by creating a deficit of a few hundred calories. If we know what our average daily count should be as a man or woman, then we should simply cut back 400 or 500 a day. This would mean that the average woman could drop from 1,800 calories to 1,300 or 1,400 calories. Experts recommend going no lower than 1,200 calories because the body could think it is in a starvation mode and hold onto the calories as fuel for storage. No lower than 1,500 for a man and please check with your Dr. before starting out on any new fitness or eating pattern if you have concerns. At the end of the week you should see a weekly weight loss most weeks between 1 to 2 pounds as recommended. Now isn't that awesome!

Please realize as you embark on these changes in your eating pattern, you will experience slight discomfort due to the reduced calorie intake. This will subside after a couple of weeks as your stomach shrinks.

A wonderful part of this process is realizing that you have taken control of this area of your life, once and for all. You can now relax and watch week after week as the pounds steadily and slowly slip off your body. We will also be discussing ways to slowly add in exercise if you do not have an exercise pattern in place. We strongly feel that it is extremely important to work first on setting up a sensible eating pattern so that you do not feel overwhelmed by adding in exercise at the same time.

Now doesn't this make sense? You can do it and you can do it for life!