Weight Loss, Diet and Fitness Program

Big portions and little exercise have made over half of adult Amerians overweight: Make the switch to small serving sizes and large helpings of exercise, and the weight will come off-like magic!

The secret to losing weight and keeping it off can be summed up in four little words:
Eat less, walk more.
But how much less? And how much more? Doctors Jim Hill and John Peters believe they have the answers, or at least the formula to help people figure out the answers for themselves. They’ve put it all in The Step Diet Book, which comes packaged with a pedometer to make sure you make every step count.

Do The Math, Drop The Pounds
“Don’t even try to lose weight if you’re not going to increase your physical activity,” says Hill, director of the University of Colorado’s Center for Human Nutrition, who has spent the past 25 years studying hows and whys of weight gain and loss.

Hill and Peters co-founded “Colorado on the Move,” a pilot program for “America on the Move.” The “On the Move” and Step Diet programs are based on a fundamental physiological fact: to lose weight, you must burn more calories than you consume. To maintain your weight, calorie consumption and expenditure need to be in balance.

“It’s all about the mathematics,” Hill says. And here’s the toughest part of the equation to crack: Consume more calories than you use and you’re going to gain weight, a fact that has made us the fattest country in the world.

Statistics show that nearly 65 percent of adult Americans are overweight-that’s 120 million people-and half of them are obese. More than 60 percent of American adults do not get the recommended 30 minutes of physical activity a day, and 25 percent of American adults aren’t physically active at all.

Hill co-founded the National Weight Control Registry, a decade-old study of adults who have lost at least 30 pounds and kept it off for at least a year. It currently includes nearly 3,000 people who have lost an average of 70 pounds and kept it off for about five years.

Anybody can lose weight, Hill says, but the people in his registry are among the rare few who haven’t gained it back.

“Keeping weight off is different than loosing weight-those are two different processes,” Hill says. “People get a lot of weight, but that’s where the help in keeping it off just isn’t there.”

How To Use A Step Counter
Hook your step counter to your belt or waistband 2 to 6 inches on either side of your belly button. Women in dresses can attach the counter to undergarments or the center of your bra. If you have a large stomach, try placing the counter on your hip. Make sure it is straight and close to your body.

Check the counter’s accuracy by taking 100 steps. The counter should register between 90 and 110 steps. If not. adjust it by moving it closer to or farther from your belly button, then try again.

Wear the counter all day, except while bathing or swimming: Take it off at bedtime and keep a log of your steps.
Step counters come in basic forms that count only steps and fancy-schmancy types that do everything from computing actual distances to figuring out the number of calories burned. Some even talk.