Yes, times have changed. So ensure your kids AND YOU are getting enough physical activity. Walk to the store instead of taking the car, enjoy our great parks, play tennis or golf — I could go on and ON!

Now I want to talk about another big one — RESTAURANT FOOD

While everyone loves going out to eat, you really have to be careful if you eat out on a regular basis. Restaurants have enormous portions, use large amounts of fat and sugar and are generally lacking on being a balanced meal.

Not to pick on any restaurant in particular because a lot of them are bad – but many burgers are over 1000 calories — Douglasville examples of these fat attack burgers include Burger King, Ruby Tuesdays and Five Guys to name a few. Many pasta portions from restaurants are not only 1 serving of grain — but most of the time, at least 5 and sometimes as many as 8-10 — yes, more than a day’s worth.

Even vegetables at restaurants are soaked and cooked in butter to make them attractive and tasty and salads are full of fat and extras like cheese.

So what do you do? First, determine if you are eating out as a treat, a necessity or because you are not interested in cooking. If it is a treat, then watch your portions and enjoy. If it is a necessity (like you are on a business trip etc) then make very wise choices, ask for dressings on the side, order small portions if they are available, ask for green salad instead of fries, avoid fried anything and opt for more fresh and whole foods like fruit, vegetables, chicken and fish.

Now for the category that is tough — the “I don’t wanna cook” gang. You really should look at reducing your meals in restaurants. It will make a major impact on your diet. Anyone can learn to cook if you can read so not knowing how is sorry – a lame excuse for not doing it. There are lots of recipes on my sister site, Douglasville Weight Loss, where you can get started.

If you are truly at a loss for cooking, then I suggest trying a meal service such as Dinner Afare or Dream Dinners to get your calories and portions under control. Home cooking helps you control the ingredients and content. So it is always the first choice and will make the biggest impact on your weight loss so really give it a try.

Check back in a few days for the next part in this series from the personal training blog – Portion Control

My first suggestion to everyone starting out or stalling out is to keep a weight loss diary. Not forever, I know that can be tedious. Try a week to start. Write down EVERYTHING!!! All that you eat and all that you drink. There are often a lot of hidden calories in things like coffee drinks and gum and candy and snacks and juices and condiments and salad dressings — you get the idea. So focus on writing everything down. Then at the end of the week, do the calculations and find out where you have issues. This can be a huge asset when your weight loss slows or stalls.

Ok, now here is a simple fact. Apply the same logic to your workout. Write it down. Add up the time. While you may have INTENDED to get to the gym 4 times this week — if you only made it once and did not work out with the intensity or amount of time — then you are not being honest with yourself when it comes to working out.

Sometimes you truly need professional help like a dietician or a personal trainer. And those are great assets, especially if you have never worked out before or are just getting started. But for a lot of people, dramatic changes can happen by just getting honest.

You can decide to lose weight at any time without a resolution. But the thing that makes you lose weight is not declaring it. It is simple science. And a simple math equation.

CALORIES IN – CALORIES OUT = CALORIES GAINED

So if you eat more than you burn, you gain. If you burn more than you eat, you lose. SIMPLE

So you need to learn how to eat healthy meals. And you need to eat fruit and vegetables and drink water – SIMPLE

If you have no idea how to eat, then try my healthy eating site Douglasville Weight Loss to get started. It is free and gives you lots of ideas on how to eat better.

Working out is CRITICAL for weight loss. You don’t get there without cardio and weights — SIMPLE

So put in the cardio sessions, a few a week is all that it takes and do a couple of strength training sessions.

Weight Loss is not an easy road and it is not an instant thing. It takes work but it is not voodoo, you just need to apply the simple methods and do it consistently.

There is a fix for it — don’t get me wrong there. But since you did not get fat overnight, you are not going to get thin overnight either. Losing weight is tough work and it is slow going and yes I am sad to say that at times it can make you feel depressed and anxious.

These are the reasons why I stress a personalized approach so heavily. It is the best way to ensure that you get the most out of your time but it is also the best way to tweak your diet, workout routine, etc when you start to stall on your results. And everyone will hit points where their weight loss will stall out.

That is the time that you have to go back to basics and keep a food diary (remember there is a free food diary on my 4fitbodies website) and a workout diary and see what needs adjusting. Did you start to add some sweets or restaurant dinners into your diet that you might have underestimated the portions or the caloric content? Did you drop your cardio from 45 minutes down to 30 minutes. You get where I am going?

The magic bullet for weight loss is the same thing as any goal in your life. It is you working hard and using your knowledge (and seeking professional help when needed) to do it.

If you have questions about personal training or how to get past a weight loss plateau, feel free to e-mail me or comment this post and I will go into more detail.

If you are not at your ideal weight, you are in the DO NOT category. Do not try to kid yourself. Be honest with yourself and realize that you do not have the ability to have things in your home that are not healthy. And in reality, those things that you have in the house “for the kids” or “for the spouse”, why are you encouraging them to eat poorly?

So let’s go clean out that pantry and get real with honest eating.

First, remember that fresh food is usually your best choice. So let’s start with the fridge and freezer. Toss out the margerine – a tub of fat — come on. If you actually need to add a small amount of butter or oil to something, you are better off with olive oil and even butter so get rid of the tub of margerine.

Check your sugars — while yogurt is healthy, getting one with sugar as a top ingredient and a million grams of sugar is a NO GO. If you can’t find one that is low in sugar, you are not trying hard enough. Check out the brands meant for babies, the organic brands and check out plain yogurt (and add your own fruit)

Consider new alternatives – plain yogurt makes a great alternate to sour cream — trust me it is good!!! Vegetarian corn dogs for the kids have more vitamins, less fat and about 1/2 the calories of the real thing and they taste good. Veggie burgers such as Gardenburger and Morningstar Farms make a great alternative to a greasy burger.

Is your crisper full — it takes a lot of veggies to have a healthy diet and if your fridge has almost none, you have to ask yourself where do you plan to get your 5 servings a day.

In the freezer, is it full of ice cream, greasy toaster pastries and instant biscuits. – Ya, gee, I wonder why you can’t stay on track too. Throw it all out.

Moving on to the pantry!!! I will have more on fridge fixing in the future too so stay tuned!

In your pantry, the biggest enemy is sugar. And he hangs out in there with his evil friend, fat. Watch out for fat free products because to make you not miss the fat, they usually add more sugar.

Cookies — You really should not have any packaged cookies in the house. Sorry, but this is not something that should be part of your diet. A cookie while you are out somewhere once in a while with a coffee is going to be a lot more satisfying and it has a built in calorie limit because you only buy one not a whole bag.

Crackers — I have some plain soda crackers in the cupboard and I use them rarely with things like tuna but there are very few crackers that are not pure carbs. Some of the flatbread crackers like Wasa are a good alternative because they have a TON of fiber and very little calories.

Bread — read the label on your bread. Does it have ingredients like fructose, maltrose, molasses — well those are all SUGAR so they should not be main ingredients in your bread. And eating a bread with 100 calories a slice is crazy. That means your whole lunch is pretty much just your bread. Use your calories more wisely.

Cereal — I see very few people who talk about their weight problem who eat oatmeal (not sugar loaded instant but just oatmeal) for breakfast. Along with some fruit and some protein, you have a low calorie nutritious breakfast. Can you say that about frosted anykind of cereal. Most boxed cereal is sugar city and even the ones who dropped their sugar, are still loaded and have almost the same amount of carbs as the original

I will be having a part 2 of this coming out soon – the changes listed above will make dramatic changes to your diet and weight loss success. TRY them if you are not getting the results you want.