2. Plan your meals. This is probably the No. 1 thing you can do to lose weight. First, use a calorie calculator to estimate how many calories you need to maintain your current weight. Now, if you want to lose a pound a week, you’ll want to cut that total by 500 calories per day to hit that goal (3,500 calories equals a pound of fat). If you want to lose weight slower, you can cut your total daily calories by less. I wouldn’t recommend more than a pound a week (which is about 50 pounds a year).
Once you have your target calories per day, you want to allocate them throughout the day. For example, if your target is 2,000 calories, you could allocate 400 calories per meal for 4 meals (7 a.m., 11 a.m., 2 p.m. and 6 p.m. for example) with two 200-calorie snacks. How you allocate your calories is completely up to you — you might want to experiment to find the best distribution.
Now plan each meal so that you fit within the calorie limit for that meal. This might take some time to calculate (try FitDay), but once you have your favorite meals planned, this isn’t too hard. You can have a listing of 400-calorie meals and 200-calorie snacks that are interchangeable. The key, of course, is sticking to the meal plan — don’t let yourself deviate. You’ll get used to it after a few days.