1. Download a food-tracking app such as LoseIt.
2. Figure out your daily calorie budget. When prompted, indicate that you want to lose 2 pounds per week. (If that sounds like a lot, don't worry--you won't.)
3. Buy a food scale. Using the scale, determine the calories contained in everything you eat. This is a pain, but eventually you will be able to estimate by sight calories in foods you eat regularly.
4. Log everything you eat, every day. Enter all of your physical activity, and try to stay just under your daily calorie budget.
5. Weigh yourself every day: ideally, at the same time of day, wearing the same type of clothes, and the same scale. In studies, people who do this lose weight faster than those who don't.
6. Only eat the following foods: lean proteins (poultry, seafood, tofu, etc.), "salad vegetables" (basically, avoiding high-glycemic vegetables like carrots), fresh fruit, and "good" fats: olives, avocado, nuts, olive oil, etc. For a list of high-glycemic vegetables to avoid and a fascinating discussion of why they and "bad carbs" should be avoided, I recommend the book "The Zone" by Barry Sears. But this info is easy to find on-line.
7. Don't drink anything with calories. It's OK to put milk in your coffee, and stuff like that. If you enjoy alcohol as I do, this is difficult. But it was when I went three months without a drop of alcohol that I noticed the most significant change, because I dropped a lot of bloat. If there is one part of this diet you should not cheat on, it's this one. I recommend going 100% alcohol-free for at least the first three months - the longer, the better.
8. Using the nutrients tracker in LoseIt, aim for the following ratio each day: 50% carbs, 40% protein, 10% fat. This is an idea I borrowed from The Zone. Sears explains better than I could why this is important. I trust him.
9. Work out 3 or 4 times a week. It doesn't have to be anything crazy, and it doesn't have to last more than 30 minutes (although of course, the more you work out, the more calories you burn, and the more you can eat that day, which is a great motivator). I don't like going to the gym, so I started biking to work; that way I'm forced to get physical activity five times a week. I might hit the gym once or twice a week (do interval! It really works.)
10. Track your progress:
a. Determine 10% of your body weight.
b. Your goal is to lose 10% of your weight in five months, and maintain your new weight for one month.
c. In the first month, your goal is to lose 3%. In the second month, lose another 3%. Third month, lose 2%. Fourth month, lose 1%. Fifth month, lose another 1%. Sixth month, lose 0% (maintain).
11. When I started, I weighed 220, so my goal was to lose 22 pounds. After I did that, instead of maintaining after five months, I kept going, losing 1% a month, until I had lost 40 lbs. So just figure out what your goal weight is, and when you hit it, go into maintenance mode.
12. Once in maintenance mode, the goal is to not gain or lose more than 2% of your body weight. Do this for six months. At the end of those six months, you will have developed a diet/activity habit that you know will keep you from putting the weight back on. This might be the most important step, because almost everybody puts the weight back on. Several years ago I lost 23 pounds and put it all back on in about 6 months.
A couple of notes:
-If you screw up, don't worry about it. Just get back on the horse the next day. The important thing is to not get discouraged, because people tend to quit when they get discouraged.
-I have found a couple of departures from the diet that seem to work as long as you watch the calories: the occasional high-fat protein like steak or bacon (those crazy Keto and Atkins people actually think high-fat proteins are better!), Greek yogurt, small portions of cheese, creamy salad dressing, and oatmeal, but I don't recommend cheating much more than that. The key here is to avoid processed food as much as possible.
-Obviously, this is a very restrictive diet, but I found the best way to approach it is to think about all the foods that you love that you CAN eat, rather than all the ones you can't. Make a list! That may seem gimmicky, but I swear I found this mindset incredibly helpful.
-You can eat fewer carbs if you want, and it's a good way to accelerate your rate of weight loss, but if you eat too few carbs you risk going into a state of ketosis, which is bad for your health. (This is how the Keto diet works.)
-In fact, the theory behind this diet is essentially the same as the other effective diets: Caveman, Zone, Atkins, and Keto. Barry Sears (the doctor who invented AZT) explains it very well in The Zone.
-One of the best features of this diet is that it's gluten-free. As Sears explains, the human digestive system is not built to effectively process foods that were developed after we stopped evolving (hence, "caveman"). I'm convinced that this is why so many people are having problems with gluten. We should not be eating it in the first place!
-Another great thing is that this diet is vegan if you rely solely on plant-based proteins.
-A problem I've encountered is the dreaded "plateau." I find the first 7 pounds or so come off pretty easily, and then you get stuck. If this happens I recommend trying Keto or Atkins for a week or two. I don't think they are healthy diets as a way of life, but a couple of weeks won't kill you. If you really don't want to do that, the key is to at least change up your diet - when your body adapts to your new diet, you tend to stop losing weight.
-The six-month rate of progress, above, is borrowed from the Diet Bet Transformer contest. I found that to be an essential motivator for me, because I'm very undisciplined unless money and pride is at stake, but to each his/her own. If you feel like you want to try Diet Bet, I have additional advice on how to approach it, so contact me at jestaplero@yahoo.com for tips.
I think that's basically it. Good luck!
