I'd like to propose a 2 week unofficial experiment. I hope you'll consider participating. And while this is posted in the TDC, it's okay with me if folks with a little less than 100 lbs to lose want to participate.

We've all been taught in the past that watching calories is how you lose weight. Now, along comes the low carb plans that tell us to not worry about calories. I think they still do matter and would like to try something to see if we can prove out that going low carb AND watching calories can give us better results with our weight loss.

UpTheHill (Lynda) has had tremendous success and has achieved her goal weight with using the concept I'm proposing for this experiment. Just think about it - she made it to her goal weight using this idea. Just how many threads have you seen in the TDC where someone has hit goal?

The concept here for the experiment is to record everything we do now for the first week so that we have a baseline of what we are currently doing. Then, for the 2nd week, change what we do to try to burn a targeted amount of calories every day. Still staying low carb, of course.

Here's the 2 week proposal:

For Week 1, continue eating and exercising like you normally do:
- record your weight on Day 1.
- Log all of your food eaten and your activities at http://fitday.com for 7 full days.
- record your weight in the morning on Day 8.
- Subtract the total calories eaten for the week from the total calories used in the activities for the week and divide by 7. This number is your average daily calorie deficit for the first week.
- Post here the average calorie deficit and how much weight you lost.

For Week 2, change your eating and exercising to hit a target calorie deficit:
- Based on week 1's average calorie deficit, set yourself a goal calorie deficit to hit each day.
- do the same thing you did for week 1, but try each day to hit your goal for the calorie deficit. (Hint: If you find late at night that you are under your goal, you can do a bit more exercise to get closer to your goal... standing in front of the TV marching or jogging in place, take a walk, do some sit ups, etc.)
- Subtract the total calories eaten from the total calories used and divide by 7 to come up with your average daily calorie deficit for the 2nd week.
- Post here the average calorie deficit and how much weight you lost.

I know it sounds like a bit more work to do this tracking, but if it works...

We can each do this on our own schedules...whenever it makes sense for you to begin, go ahead. If you've already been tracking your food intake and activies, then you can just record week 1 from that information. You could also do week 2 whenever you want - just be sure to record you weight on Day 1 and Day 8 so that you can calculate the weight loss.

So who's in?