Know your enemy

Now that you have your reason(s) and your goal(s) for wanting to make a change, what's the next step? You will want to gather some intel! Body fat is your enemy and you need to gather some quality intelligence on this enemy to help you determine how best to attack and defeat it before it destroys you.


Where to start?

First, let's get a better understanding of the problem. You're fat and you want to lose as much excess fat as possible. Chances are you did not get fat overnight, it was a gradual process. Guess what, losing fat is also a gradual process.

But what is fat you might ask? Fat is stored energy. The food you consume is fuel, in the form of calories, for your body to accomplish it's daily activities. Your car is fueled by gasoline but if you try to overfill the tank the excess gasoline spills out onto the ground, sadly your body stores any excess calories as fat.

Everyone has a Basal Metabolic Rate(BMR), it's basically the number of calories you would burn in a day without ever getting out of bed. Based on your lean muscle mass, your metabolism(which in great measure is determined by your lean muscle mass), and your daily activities you burn a specific amount of calories on a given day.

Going forward you will need to know how many calories you are consuming on a daily basis so you can determine your exercise needs as well as adjust your daily caloric intake to help in losing fat or building muscle. The best way to accomplish this is by keeping a food journal, you will need to write down everything you eat or drink with the date and time. There are several good websites that provide free online services that allow you to track your diet, exercise goals and achievements as well as various other stats and information: http://fittracker.shapefit.com, http://www.fitday.com, http://www.myfitnesspal.com, and http://www.mynetdiary.com to name just a few.

It's also a good idea to record your current weight, body measurements, and body fat percentage prior to starting as well as taking a before picture. These will all serve as motivation when you get discouraged(and you will) and also allow you to track your progress. Go gather your intel and write it in your journal.

Happy hunting!

Ecclesiastes 3: 1 ^"To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven: ”