To get you started, we need to understand how many calories you are eating each day, and what it’s doing to the scale.

This will be a challenging week, as you will be writing down everything you eat and drink, but it’s a necessary step.

Do not eat differently during the first week. Repeat, eat what you normally eat.

In addition to logging your food intake, you will also need to weigh yourself first thing in the morning for the next seven days no exceptions.

Make sure to weigh yourself after urinating each morning. We need to make sure the weigh-­ins are done under a consistent set of circumstances each day.

If you don’t know the specific serving size of a food you ate, don’t panic. Describe it the best you can:

-    A fist-­size of mashed potatoes with 2 pats of butter.

-    A half-­plate or corn.

-    2 large scoops of ice cream.

-    A steak 1/3rd the size of my plate.

From here, head over to webmd’s food calculator:

https://www.webmd.com/diet/healthtool-food-calorie-counter

Spend a couple hours guestimating your total weekly calories.

Yes, this might be a pain in the backside, but if you can’t make it past this step, how do you expect to actually monitor daily calories and lose weight?

You can do this. Invest the time. You will learn a lot, and it will get easier. Once you have determined the amount of calories you have eaten this week, divide this number by seven. This is your “average daily calorie intake.” It’s the number of calories you have eaten per day.

We now need to cross reference this number against what the scale has said to establish your approximate “calorie maintenance level.”

This is the number of calories you could eat per day that would neither allow you to gain or lose weight.

With your average daily calorie intake level in hand, add or subtract the following to calculate your maintenance level. This will provide us with a starting point for your flex calorie diet.

•     If you gained 3 or more pounds this week, subtract 600 calories from your daily intake to establish a starting point for your flex calorie diet.

•     If you gained 2 pounds this week, subtract 400 calories from your daily intake to establish a starting point for your flex calorie diet.

•     If you gained 1 pound this week, subtract 200 calories from your daily intake to establish a starting point for your flex calorie diet.

•     If you gained 0 pounds this week, use your current daily intake to establish a starting point for your flex calorie diet.

•     If you lost 1 pound this week, add 200 calories to your daily intake to establish a starting point for your flex calorie diet.

•     If you lost 2 pounds this week, add 400 calories to your daily intake to establish a starting point for your flex calorie diet.

•     If you lost 3 or more pounds this week, add 600 calories to your daily intake to establish a starting point for your flex calorie diet.

Now, I know what a few of you might be thinking. If you gained/lost 3 pounds, that’s 10,500 extra calories. Shouldn’t you be subtracting/adding more each day?

No.

Weight gains or losses aren’t typically all fat. Weight swings usually involve water retention/reduction from additional/fewer carbs, sodium and minerals. Weight swings also involve changes in waste retention/reduction.

A three pound weight gain doesn’t mean you ate 10,500 too many calories this week. If you overate by that much, odds are you would have gained 8­-12 pounds on the scale from water, waste, etc.

Either way, we are merely trying to establish a reasonable starting point for your diet. Which is exactly what this method accomplishes.

Next we’re going to go through some working examples…