Lose 10 Pounds In 10 Weeks Without Fearing Your Food

If you've ever set out to lose 10 pounds, I've got an idea for you to actually do it. Be careful, though, this will change your life, and it's pretty simple. All you need to do is cut 35,000 calories from your life, and we will get there.

Every pound of fat you want to lose requires the loss of 3,500 calories. When you find a way to lower your calorie consumption easily (no restrictive diets) and you find things that make you move but aren't "exercise," it is easy to remove a few calories every day.

Think about the foods you eat daily. I put a few of my "whoops, I didn't mean to eat that" foods.

Tim Horton's large double double = 270 calories

Your average chocolate bar = 250 calories

Starbucks venti latte = 190 calories

Can of Dr. Pepper = 150 calories

Glass of wine = 150 calories

The next part of the equation gets into understanding serving size. It's how healthy food can put extra body fat on our bodies.

Chicken is 50 calories an ounce. Three ounces is a serving of chicken. Everyone ounce you eat extra is calories you don't need. The average chicken breast right out of a package is seven to 10 ounces. Eating a whole chicken breast is 200 calories extra.

Average salad dressing has 70 calories in a tablespoon. Two tablespoons should make any salad taste great. Most people use about four tablespoons if they use the standard ladle at a salad bar. There's 140 extra calories.

If we all do this and keep it really simple, we can be down 10 pounds in 10 weeks.

I'm not suggesting you start fearing your food and counting calories. In fact, I hope people get the opposite from this post. We have made food into the thing that makes us fat or skinny. Food is also readily available and has lost its value to being critical for survival. Now we just hop over to the local grocery store and buy without thinking. Imagine if we made certain things "treats" again. If we selected days where we eat those treats and savoured them -- we felt zero guilt and only indulged once in a while.

I'm hopeful these numbers open your eyes and you enlist the help of a registered dietitian to make a plan.

For the sake of my goal to get us all down 10 pounds, try this:

Drink a black coffee on Tuesday and Thursday -- it's functional, not as delicious. That's going to save us 400 calories a week.

Make Wednesday wine free -- save another 150 calories

No pop on Monday -- 150 calories gone

Remove one chocolate bar a week -- that's 250 calories

Ensure that you measure, and eat correct servings at three meals. That will save the average person almost 1,000 calories.

Without being on a diet or changing too much, just making conscious decisions daily, we are going to save 2,100 calories each week.

Now, to talk about burning calories! If we follow the above plan, or a close variation, and find a way to burn 1,400 calories, we will lose pound of fat a week as a community of conscious eaters and movers.

Here is the fun fact: a simply 30-minute walk will burn about 150 calories. By simply going for an easy walk, you'll get more than half way to that 1400 walking Monday - Friday. I'd suggest from there you head to a site like ParticipACTION and find something new to try. Nothing too intense if you are new to exercise, but they have a list of things that could inspire you to more activity.

Fitness has become synonymous with the gym. For me, my New Year's resolution was to get out hiking more. I've promised myself two active vacations via road trips and hiking this summer. I'm heading to Portland, Ore. soon to hike and explore. I'll also be heading out almost every weekend to explore a new trail or adventure in my home province. I'll be using Travel Manitoba's site. I figure since there is $1.6 billion dollars spent on seeing the beauty of my province, I should put more value on seeing my own back yard. My Instagram account is going to be full of pictures of adventures this summer... each adventure is going to burn calories.

If we all do this and keep it really simple, we can be down 10 pounds in 10 weeks.

Once we set a foundation of smart eating and movement, and it becomes a lifestyle, then we can talk about some of that high-intensity nonsense. I'm not going to lie, I love that stuff, too. Spin classes where my legs burn, bootcamps where I get sick to my stomach, martial arts classes that leave my head spinning. All of those things are what change a physique, and add to sex appeal. But that stuff doesn't matter -- we need a nation that covers the health basics, first.

Your best bet is to enlist the help of a professional. Check out your benefits at work -- it may be covered. Involve your friends, cover the basics, make it a lifestyle and let's make our nation healthy, One Fit City at a time.