I am “that” girl who is always trying to lose a couple of pounds. Think Bridget Jones’ Diary, but without the cigarettes.

I think about food and exercise all the time, which I am pretty sure was bred into me being a Southern Caucasian girl who grew up in prep schools. I have been dieting and/or thinking about dieting and/or beating myself up for not dieting my whole life. That being said, after having my first child, I am still dealing with the dreaded last five pounds that everyone says is impossible to lose.

So, I have spent a TON of time researching, because really, it can’t be that hard to figure out, right? I mean, I went to medical school.  I can totally figure this out.

After all my time and research, I have the answer! I wanted to pass it along because it is so easy and straightforward. For the life of me, I can’t seem to understand how I couldn’t figure this out earlier.

Exercise is the biggest component of weight loss. It is the key. And, you have to be consistent. Your body will respond best to consistency.

Make sure you add variety into your workouts. You have to mix it up and “shock” the body every once in awhile. Because, if you do the same routine every time, your body gets too used to it and won’t respond anymore. You should do more weight lifting, that is the key to building muscle and sparking your metabolism. You should lift heavy weights with a few repetitions for fast results. You should lift lighter weights with lots of reps until your muscles “burn out” for fast results. You should do more cardio. Cardio is where you burn calories, and therefore much more important than lifting weights. You should only do cardio as interval training. High intensity interval training is the way to go. But if you are doing it correctly, you should only be able to do high intensity training 2 times a week, max. You should push yourself on your high intensity segments to almost the breaking point. But, you should listen to your body, and not push too far. You need to do at least 30 minutes of cardio a day, every day. You should get 10,000 steps a day. Every day. But don’t forget about your rest days, because without rest days you will probably injure yourself. I mean, even pro athletes take a day off a week, right? But, remember to get those 10,000 steps in.

You aren’t losing weight? Nutrition is the most important factor in losing weight.

You are probably eating too much. Calories in, calories out, doesn’t matter what kind of calories you eat. Feel free to eat 1200 calories of Twinkies a day if you want, doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter how many calories you eat, it matters what kind of calories. Carbs are evil, you should eat more protein. Protein is okay, the real key is fiber. But, our ancestors didn’t eat wheat, so make sure you get your fiber elsewhere. We should be eating like our caveman ancestors, or a French person living in Paris, or like you are Mediterranean, because they only eat “good” fats. Wine is good for you. Wine has a lot of “empty” calories so if you want to lose weight stop drinking alcohol. If you are obese then you should be on a strict calorie limited diet. Like, 1200 calories a day. Still not losing weight? Well, you probably aren’t eating enough. If you don’t eat enough, then your body goes into starvation mode and your metabolism basically stops. But, 2 days a week, you should only eat 500 calories a day. The rest of the days you can eat what you want. But not really, because again remember that carbs and wheat are evil. But if you restrict yourself too much then that’s bad, so you should give yourself cheat days when you can eat whatever you want. But be consistent, the body responds best to consistency. But you should have low carb and high carb days, so as to keep your body’s metabolism guessing and therefore running better. But, you probably are still eating too much when you are not eating too little.

So now that I have this all figured out, I am going to eat an evil Reese’s peanut butter cup, which I am sure fits into my Paleo/French/Mediterranean/500 calorie 2 days a week/1 cheat day a week diet somehow 🙂