Weight Control 101


DietSheet   |   Weight Loss   |   Zone Diet   |   Tips   |   Links

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Welcome to my weight loss web site, home of the free DietSheet© spreadsheet program.

DietSheet

DietSheet is an easy way to keep track of food and exercise calories, and other nutrition information (like the percent of calories from protein, carbs, and fat) on a daily or weekly basis. It's completely free, with no strings attached.

View of DietSheet main page

This screenshot shows what to expect. Each day you specify how much of each food you eat. All you supply is the amount (e.g., 1 serving) eaten by typing a number in the green column.

The Daily Results section (yellow area) sums daily calories and breaks down calories by source (protein, carbs, fat). There's also a place to enter your maintenance and exercise calories. At day's end the results show your net calories (positive or negative) and your calorie breakdown.

Pressing a shortcut key copies the day's results to the Weekly Log. The Weekly Log lets you track your calories and nutrition on a weekly basis.

Requirements

Using Dietsheet requires that you have Microsoft Excel (Version 97 or later) installed on your machine.

To use DietSheet you must supply information about the foods you usually eat in a food database (this only needs to be done once). The information to enter is found on the standard "Nutrition Facts" label on all packaged foods. This step is not difficult.

To download DietSheet use the links below.

Right-click on a link, then select the Save Target As... option.

You may need to enable macros in Excel in order to use all the features of DietSheet 2000 or DietSheet.


Weight Loss

Disclaimers. I'm not a medical doctor; these are opinions; everybody is different; get other opinions.

Claimers. I do have a PhD in psychology. "Weight loss is 90% all mental."

How to lose weight

One of the biggest obstacles to losing weight is that people make it too complicated. They buy books, try various "systems," go on crash diets, or spend 6 mos. psyching themselves up to join a health club, then quit after 3 visits.

The truth is that people don't do these things to lose weight--they do them to avoid losing weight! These things focus the mind away from what is the real goal. The diet becomes more important than actually losing the weight.

(The more unrealistic and harsh the diet or regimen, the better--because that insures you'll give up--which is what your unconscious really wants.)

The people who write books and sell systems for weight loss love this--it's what keeps them in business. They help support the myth that weight loss is complicated.

In truth weight loss is simple. It boils down to one thing: you have to burn more calories in a day than you eat.

Further, it involves a long term lifestyle change. A crash diet isn't doing to do you much good by itself, because you can't eat that way over the long haul. What you need, what you should be doing now--today--is to develop a lifestyle that combines sensible exercise, sensible food portions, and a bit of care in selecting what you eat.

* * *

Counting calories is the first step--that's how you know what to eat and how much to eat. So, short at sweet--to lose weight you must:

  1. Count how many calories you consume in a day.

  2. Figure out how many calories your body needs to perform basic metabolic functions and activities of living.

  3. Figure out how many calories you burned today from exercise.

Subtract 2 and 3 from 1.

  • If number is positive, you've consumed that many extra calories.

  • If the number is negative, you have a negative calorie balance.

Keep rough track of this balance from day to day. If you reach a net surplus (more calories consumed than needed) of 3500 calories, you've gained about a pound of fat. If you reach a negative net of about -3500 calories, you've lost about a pound.

Once you get the feel for this, you will automatically start to avoid foods that have a lot of calories but really aren't that important. For example, butter and margarine have tons of calories. A lot of times just stopping putting these on everything will bring your net calories much closer to the target range for weight loss or maintenance.


The Zone Diet (is good!)

Although most "systems" are suspect, the Zone diet, is pretty good.

Don't confuse the Zone diet with the Atkins (high protein) diet-- they're a lot different. The Zone diet is based on sensible moderation--a balance of proteins, carbohydrates on fat. Importantly, the Zone diet has a lot of real science behind it.

The bottom line is not to overdo the amount of calories you consume in the form of carbohydrates. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has been pushing a high-carbohydrate diet for years--and you can see what it's produced: a lot of fat people!

The reason is because when you consume too many carbohydrates, a characteristic set of physiological things happen:

    1. the carbohydrates turn rapidly to blood sugar (glucose).

    2. Your brain detects the rapid rise in blood sugar

    3. Your brain sends a signal to the pancreas to release insulin

    4. The insulin causes cells to take the sugar out of the blood and store it as fat.

The result: a few minutes after loading up on the carbs

  • you're blood sugar is low again--maybe even lower than before you ate,

  • you're hungry again--maybe hungrier than before,

    and

  • you're fatter!

The Zone Diet aims to mix carbohydrates, protein and fat each time you eat. It is the ideal of a "balanced diet." In addition to meeting your nutrition needs, this helps insure that you don't have a rapid rise in blood sugar after eating.

Based on some research, Barry Sears, inventor of the Zone Diet, recommends that 40% of calories come from carbohydrates, 30% come from protein, and 30% from fat. But these percentages don't have to be exact (I do fine with 33% from each source).

Consistent with the Zone Diet principles, it isn't a good idea to overdo the "fat-free" stuff. Too little fat--say, getting less than 15%--20% of your calories from fat--can cause problems: your body needs a reasonable amount of fat to function. And fat deprivation can make you feel bad.

Anyway that's the Zone Diet in a nutshell. You can read the book if you like-- it is informative, but it isn't necessary, because the principles are so simple. For more information on the web, try these links:


Tips

There are many tricks to losing weight and keeping it off. You want to learn as many to make weight loss easy. The more easy you make it, the more you can stick with it.

Here are some good tips I've gleaned over the years:

* * *


Rules of Thumb

  • To estimate basic calorie requirements, multiply your ideal weight in pounds times 15. If you want something fancier, check around online for formulas that adjust for age, activity level, and body type.

  • Figure exercise calories as: 100 calories for each mile walked, jogged or run (regardless of speed); 100 calories for each 15-20 minutes spent on a stationary bike or stairclimber; or appropriate value for other exercise.

  • Each pound lost costs about 3500 calories--i.e., to loose 1 lb, your cumulative (i.e., over several days) calorie deficit must be around -3500 calories.

  • A gram of fat has approximately 9 calories, a gram of protein 4 calories, and a gram of carbohydrate 4 calories.

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© 2001 John Uebersax PhD

rev. 18 September 2006 (updated links)