So, you’ve decided to get in better shape and drop some of the fat you’ve picked up while in quarantine. Once you’ve made that decision, you’ll likely decide (correctly) that you need to get your diet in order. And then it happens. Confusion ensues. What’s the first step? You don’t even know where to start on the road from “a little extra” to “god-like.” Should you go vegan? What about protein? Wait, aren’t carbs bad? Or is it fats? What about eating after 6pm, isn’t that bad? This line of thinking goes on for what feels like eternity until you usually decide to do one of two things: hop from diet to diet or worse, not make any changes. For this reason, I’m going to give you three first steps to take that will bring your waistline down like the stock market in 1929.

1.      Drink only water, black coffee, or black/green tea. Let’s clarify: a caramel macchiato isn’t black coffee. A cappuccino with almond milk isn’t black coffee. Black coffee is black coffee. No cream, no sugar, no syrups or whipped cream. Same goes for tea. That matcha lemonade from Starbucks isn’t green tea. Green tea is green tea. Water plus leaves and nothing else.

You might be wondering: why only these three things? They all have one thing in common: they have zero calories. What I’m trying to do is cut down the number of calories you eat in a day without going after your food…yet. You can still eat dinner with your family with no changes in the meal. All you’d do is swap out the beer for water. Or when you go to the office (which is in your house right now, but you get the idea,) instead of a caramel macchiato (a grande from Starbucks has 240 Calories) you’re having black coffee (0 calories.) Do the math. If you have one macchiato every day for a week, that’s 1,680 calories. That’s nearly a full day’s worth of eating. Just from your morning beverage.

2.      Eat like an adult. I think you know what this means. Look at what you’re eating and ask yourself this: would your mother approve of her child eating like this? If your plate is full of things like vegetables, lean meats, and starches (potatoes, rice, etc.) the answer is probably yes. If it’s filled with microwaveable food or stuff that comes in boxes with cartoon characters on the front, the answer is likely no.

Some people will say that they don’t know how to eat healthy. I don’t really believe that. Do you sincerely not know that eating half a pack of Oreos every day is probably not good for you? Do you actually believe that eating McDonald’s two out of three meals a day is part of a healthy diet? Most of us know what healthy eating looks like, but sometimes we overcomplicate things by getting stuck on little details and not seeing the bigger picture. We get wrapped up in which supplement will help us balance out our blood sugar or which herb has the best cancer-fighting properties. All the while we’re eating fast food and frozen dinners in quantities that would frighten a sumo wrestler. We forget that just eating like an adult is often good enough to start on the road to being fit. And since you are an adult, that means you’re the one who buys the food. Simply not buying junk food and it not being in the house is often a powerful start.

3.      If you’re going to eat the junk, get smaller portions of it. Let’s be serious. Sometimes we end up eating junk. This is called life and in life things don’t always go as planned. You’ve been on the road with the family for four hours and the only things around are McDonald’s and Denny’s. This doesn’t mean all hope is lost. This is the part where we employ the tactic of “do the least bad.” When you get the junk food, get a smaller portion than you normally would. If you normally get a Big Mac, get a cheeseburger. If you normally have a large fries, get a small fries instead. If you normally have a large coke, get a large diet coke. Or even better, see number 1.

Every now and then, you get the itch to just eat some crap. This is totally normal. So go ahead, and have something small. It’s better to deviate from the diet in a small way on purpose than it is to just lose control because you can’t take it anymore and eat three Big Macs, an extra large fries, and a gallon of coke. The former might set you back a couple of hundred calories. The latter might set you back a couple of thousand. On top of that, losing control and eating all of that usually comes wrapped in guilt and self-loathing for not having discipline. Negative thoughts like “what’s wrong with me” and “I’ll never lose this weight” and so on whirl around your head like marbles in a blender. So just eat the KFC in a small, voluntary dose once in a while to prevent psychological pandemonium.

         If you’re looking to make some changes, but don’t know where to begin, give these a try. To get really lean (we’re talking six-packs abs,) you’ll have to do a lot more than this. If you can do these things, however, it’ll get you moving in the right direction and give you the motivation to try other, more intense or involved tactics. Small steps in the right direction are better than running leaps in the wrong one or just staying put.