Secrets of the Lean Plate Club
 
The messages often begin like this:
 
“Hi, Sally. I need to lose 20 pounds for a wedding later this month. What can I do?”
 
“Dear Sally—I’ve lost 35 pounds over the past year, but now I find that I’m slipping into my old eating habits, and I just can’t find the motivation to exercise. Help! I don’t want to put this weight back on after I worked so hard to take it off.”
 
“Hey, Sally. I just got on the scale and I can’t believe what I weigh! I don’t know how this happened. Where do I start?”
 
“Sally—I’m working in my first job. I know I’ve been partying a little on the weekends, but the pounds are just piling on. If it’s like this now, what’s it going to be like when I’m 30?”
 
“Sally, I’ve lost 25 pounds in the last six months, but my weight seems to have plateaued for the last few weeks. I am so discouraged. What do I do now?”
 
You can feel the frustration, impatience, and desperation in these messages. There’s a sense of being out of control. Behind many of them is the nagging, unspoken fear that often comes wrapped in a little bit of panic: “Maybe I can’t take the weight off. Maybe this really is hopeless.”
 
I’m here to tell you that it’s not.
 
Lean Plate Club members prove that week after week. Will the pounds melt away? Nope, I can’t promise that. Successful weight loss takes time, focus, and commitment. Anybody who tells you otherwise is not being honest. And yes, the majority of people do experience a discouraging weight plateau somewhere in the process. But there are easy steps to make this a simpler journey, one that you can enjoy. Just ask Melissa Glassman, 50, who with help from the Lean Plate Club has lost half her body weight, going from 250 pounds on a 5'3" frame to a healthy 125 pounds. Whether you are trying to hold the line on future weight gain, shed a few pounds, or make some major changes like Melissa, the lessons in Secrets of the Lean Plate Club can help you achieve your goals.
 
Since I began the Lean Plate Club in July 2001, I’ve interviewed hundreds of experts, read several thousand pages of scientific journals, and been in contact with tens of thousands of Lean Plate Club members by e-mail, via the Web chat, and by phone. So to whet your soon-to-be-healthier appetite, here are just some of the secrets that you’ll find in the pages ahead. Knowing and practicing these secrets will help you to reach a healthier weight and live like a thinner person.
 
Calories do count. Forget all the hype and empty promises. Yes, it does come down to the numbers: calories in versus calories out. Eat too much, burn too few calories, and the pounds add up—whether you adhere to a low-fat regimen, eliminate carbohydrates, or become a vegetarian. It doesn’t matter. You’re going to have to change the numbers in your favor, which means a deficit of daily calories to lose weight.
 
Amherst Mass.: Hi, Sally! Since I’ve lost 64 pounds, people often ask what the secret is. Well guess what? It’s measuring portion sizes, knowing what a portion is, tracking food for the day, and exercising more. Recently, I hit a plateau and wondered why. I realized I’d been guessing in my head instead of writing down the number of servings in each food group every day. So the dreaded “calorie creep” happened. Three days after resuming keeping a little chart—which only takes a minute—I lost two more pounds and have continued that way to reach a body mass index of 21.9, down from 30.
 
“But what about Atkins or South Beach? They don’t count calories.” Read the fine print, and you’ll find that some form of calorie restriction is part of every well-known weight-loss plan from Atkins to the Zone. That’s why in a few pages, you’ll discover how to calculate the right number of daily calories for you, including so-called discretionary calories for indulging in such treats as a glass of a wine or a piece of chocolate.
 
Diets don’t work long-term. On the weekly Lean Plate Club Web chat, I’ve jokingly said that I could develop the Whipped Cream Diet and guarantee that it would produce weight loss. At least for a while. That’s because virtually every diet does work in the short term. The simple act of monitoring what you eat automatically helps you focus on and decrease how many calories you consume. Cut calories and the weight starts to come off.
 
I can also guarantee that there would come a time when the novelty of eating whipped cream every day would wear off. In fact, you’d eventually get sick of whipped cream. Then you’d add back the other foods that the Whipped Cream Diet eliminated to keep calories in check. As you can probably guess, you’d start regaining weight, which is what happens with every other diet. They all stop working, because they’re too restrictive, too complicated, or both. Pretty soon boredom sets in, nutritional mischief follows, and . . . well, you know the rest. To succeed, you must find a way of eating and staying active that you can live with long-term. For one 45-year-old Lean Plate Club member and his wife, that means establishing an exercise room in their basement, setting aside time for early-morning walks together, and making more of their food from scratch so that they can control calories and avoid processed ingredients.
 
You didn’t put on the weight overnight. It may seem like rolls of fat have suddenly padded your waist, derriere, thighs, arms, back, chest, and stomach, but unwanted pounds creep on slowly and insidiously. Just an extra 100 calories per day—less than the amount found in a grande skim latte or a candy bar—add up to an extra ten pounds per year. Ten pounds this year, ten pounds next, and it’s no longer a mystery why you, along with two-thirds of the U.S. adult population, have a lot of unwanted weight to lose. There are no quick fixes for these extra pounds, but the good news is that by making some simple habit changes, the odds are good that you can lose the weight in a fraction of the time that you gained it.
 
There is no one way to achieve a healthy weight. Numerous diet books and commercial weight-loss plans claim to provide the “right way” to lose weight, but there’s no scientific evidence to back those claims. Every diet works for someone, at least temporarily. No diet works for everyone. During the Lean Plate Club Program, you’ll add at least one healthy habit weekly—sometimes more—that will slowly, but steadily, help you to achieve a healthier weight. Think of it as attention to behavior change or the ABCs of the Lean Plate Club philosophy. By tailoring healthy eating to your food preferences and the kind of physical activity you like best to your daily schedule, you’ll develop healthier habits for good. Anyone can do drastic things to reach a goal weight temporarily. But unless you eat what you like and do something you enjoy to work out, odds are that you won’t...