At the risk of stating the obvious, crash diets and crash workouts are a terrible idea. They make you feel like crap and they are unsustainable by design. If you want to maintain a healthy bodyweight, you need to figure out a diet and bodyweight that you can stick with.

Step 1: Start a workout program.

If you eat enough, there is no amount of exercise that you can do that will allow you to reach your bodyweight goals. But your diet will need to be more strict if you don’t exercise than if you do. You don’t need a program that is too exciting. You can set up something for yourself that you can start right away by clicking on the link “Go to Workout Builder” at the top of this blog.

Step 2: Create a sustainable meal plan.

Don’t use a hyper strict meal plan that you learned about in a book or on the internet. Create your own meal plan. All you need to do is make a sincere effort to eat diverse and quality foods. What will determine whether you meet your bodyweight goals is how much you eat. If your diet is consistent from one week to the next, then what you eat shouldn’t matter all that much. Just try to eat the same amount of food every day. You can literally break it down by the amount of food on your plate, but don’t forget to keep track of what you drink too. An approximation is fine. It’s okay to “cheat” too, as long as your cheating is consistent from one week to the next.

Step 3: Buy a scale and weigh yourself.

Weigh yourself at least once a week. Try to do it first thing in morning with a consistent amount of clothing. Ignore small fluctuations. You may fluctuate about five pounds a day or from one day to the next, but try to focus on your lowest weight of the day. If you hit a new low at least once a week, just stick with the amount of food that you have been eating. If you gain or retain bodyweight, then lower your daily food intake by a little bit.

Step 4: Pick a reasonable target weight, then stop when you get there.

Avoid trying to see how low you can go. You’ll hate it down there. And when you eventually break, the extremist personality you used to drop down so low will cause you to start eating with reckless abandon and will put you back at a bodyweight that made you want to lose weight to begin with. You will succeed when you can come to terms with moderation. You know I’m right.