Well the first thing to do is if that “60 pounds” number came from the BMI chart ignore it completely. The BMI is the result of the same 19th century pseudo-science that gave us phrenology, it’s intent was to prove poor people are poor because of genetics, when it comes to figuring out if you’re healthy it’s crap. Now if they got your body fat percentage, that’s useful data.
Portion control is at least as much of the picture as the stuff we’re “supposed” to eat. I’ve burned off 70 pounds in recent years, and there’s 2 bags of Doritos in the cupboard. Reduce everything, eliminate nothing was my motto, so I still get my soda and beer and chips and Italian sausage, just not as much. Eat smart and exercise will take care of the waste line, HDL and LDL.
I get most of exercise in at lunch, I eat leftovers brought from home then go to the gym at lunch. This gives me the enjoyment of getting out of the office at lunch, plus the exercise time that doesn’t eat into non-work hours, helps with portion control, and saves money (even if you only eat dirt cheap fastfood at $5 a meal buying workday lunches in an expensive habit, I guarantee you can find something more entertaining to do with $100 a month that eat 20 bigmacs).
On portion control it’s important to remember you’re eating LESS, not STARVING. If you eat too little you throw your body into a panic mode where it starts to digest your organs muscles and bones, which is at least as unhealthy as it sounds, your body will also drop your metabolism so you burn less calories. A lot of people who under eat will have a binge weekend and find they lost a bunch of weight, because they finally ate enough to get their body out of panic mode.
The absolute biggest thing though is to not think it’s temporary. If you want to get the pounds off and keep them that way it has to be a permanent change. If you get to your goal and go back to “normal” you’ll be exactly like you are now before you know it. Over eating and under exercising is a permanent problem, it cannot be addressed with a temporary solution. It has to be a new you. The new me can have two bags of Doritos in the cupboard and they last so long they actually start to get stale, the only way two bags of Doritos would survive more than 48 hours in the old me’s cupboard was if I wasn’t home. And that’s how it has to be, you’ve got to rewrite who you are, almost like a religious conversion. Or not. If you’re happy don’t sweat it. There’s too many people in the world trying to lose weight because somebody else wants them to, it never works and it just makes people miserable for no reason.
What’s wrong with phrenology? When I worked in a prison I could tell by the bumps on a con’s head that they had messed with the wrong guard.