To hell with the Warrior Diet

"What did you do during Phase One when you lost 37 pounds?"

I'm not giving up already, just sure some people will want information about Phase One. Incidentally, that's just an arbitrary nomenclature that I've assigned to that period of time. I never had a plan with separate phases. I'll go into detail eventually, or if you'd like to leave a comment and ask a specific question, I can help with that too. I will say that I'm not harboring and secret Jedi tricks of weight-loss and a good many of you may be disappointed with the explanation on how I lost 37 pounds to go from 212 to 175 and 28% body fat to 15%.

I will say that I used the DietPower software. I tracked calories. The Warrior Diet doesn't ask you to track calories and I am fine with that, it gets annoying. But I can honestly say that the 6 month period where I tracked every piece of food or drink that went into my body was a great learning experience. You learn quite a bit about your food ratios, how much fiber, protein, sugars, and fats you get from certain foods and how that effects your macro-nutrient ratios (daily Carb-Fat-Protein ratios). You learn to guess fairly accurately the number of calories in something along with the appropriate portion size for that item. For one, I wasn't aware that a half cup of my favorite trail mix was over 500 calories. When you're trying to lose a bunch of fat, sitting down eating trail mix out of the bag isn't probably your best option as an extra 500 calories can sneak up on you quick. DietPower is free to try for 15 days and that's what I did. I lost 10 pounds the first two weeks I tried it, so I bought it outright. FitDay is free and so is The Daily Plate. I found DietPower easier to use than Fitday and I didn't become aware of the Daily Plate until after I bought DietPower so I never used it. Whichever you use (and if you try or buy DietPower, why not use the links in the sidebar? I'll get like 50 cents or something, I'm not too proud to accept it), I think it's important to take some time to log everything you eat. Not just for tracking calories, but to gain a basic knowledge of food and nutrition. Studies have shown that most people severely miscalculate what they eat during the day and if you don't know what you're eating, how are you going to be able to get in shape?

People estimate that, on average, they make about 15 food- and beverage-related decisions each day. But the truth is, they make more than 15 times that -- more than 200 such decisions.