I thought it would be handy to myself (and maybe others one day) to outline a concrete strategy to lose weight. Firstly, to outline a summary of many hours of reading and even more hours of chit-chat with friends about the topic of losing weight, I’ll summarize it all in the following points…

• Eat good food (vegies, fruits, almonds, fish, fiber, red meat, complex carbohydrates)
• Don’t eat too much (especially sweet things and carbohydrates)
• Drink lots of water. Also prefer green tea over coffee
• Exercise most days, walking for 45mins is a great base. Swimming is excellent. Building core strength is excellent. If possible exercise in the mornings; it’s free time, you can do it consistently, it’s a metabolism booster, and good for fat burn due to low insulin levels in our blood.
• Get a reasonable amount of sleep most nights (8 hours is a good amount). For me this means, to bed by 11pm, up at 7am (for my walkies!)

That’s it! If i can think of more crucial things for getting healthy and in the process losing weight, I’ll add it here. Any others with some advice, please comment away

As far as exercise goes, I thought it would be useful to outline an incremental plan of increasing the amount of exercise I do each week since exercise, as my GP pointed out to me has *many many* benefits aside from simply burning energy. It has been proven many times that exercise increases flow of blood to the brain. Therefore I will make this morning walk a mandatory part of my daily routine, it simply has to become a norm!

Week 1 ( 8th – 14th Sep 2008 ) goals:

• Walk 45mins (every morning)
• 10×3 push-ups (every day)
• 10×3 sit-ups (every day)
• 10×3 supermans (every day)
• 500m swim (20 laps) – Wed Morning

Week 2 ( 15th – 21st Sep 2008 ) goals:

• Extra set of push-ups, sit-ups, supermans (eg. 10×4)
• Extra 250m swim – Wed Morning (e.g. 750m – 30 laps)

Week 2 ( 22nd – 28th Sep 2008 ) goals:

• Maintain routine

Week 4 ( 29th – 4th Oct 2008 ) goals:

• Maintain routine + extra 250m swim (e.g. 1km swim)

I’ll definitely need to review this plan, but for now i think it looks achievable with a bit of grit and determination. And I’m facing it, this is becoming a real health issue for me. My weight could give me a serious desease.