Last fall, Chris Burns, 34, of Chicago made a small investment and got a big return in weight loss.
Burns, who travels Monday through Thursday every week for his consulting job, had packed on pounds over the past few years because he ate out frequently, sat in meetings for 14 to 15 hours a day and did not exercise regularly.
But in October, he downloaded the weight-loss application MyNetDiary ($5 a month) to his iPhone and used it to track calories and lose 32 pounds. "If I'm sitting at a restaurant, I look up my options and keep track of my caloric intake," he says. "It allows me to record my exercise and what I am burning every day, not only going for a run but also walking the dog. It keeps me at a level to meet my target weight loss. To me, weight loss is a matter of simple math. It's how much you are burning and how much you are putting in."
His story was selected by a panel of experts to be featured in the sixth annual USA TODAY Weight-Loss Challenge in the newspaper and online at dietchallenge.usatoday.com. This year's series, which runs every Monday through mid-May, focuses on how to lose weight on a budget.
Burns says when he's at home, he can control what he eats pretty well, but it's much more difficult when he's traveling. "I spend a lot of time on the road and in meetings with clients. When you're away from home, my diet consists of what I have access to -- restaurant food, airport concessions, catered lunches. The portions sneak up on you.
"Not only that but calories in the dishes at restaurants could be double, triple or quadruple what they'd be if I cooked them at home. You lose a little bit of the portion control and ingredient selection that you have when you cook for yourself. "
Plus, exercise used to be the first thing to fall off his schedule when he was on the road. After a long day of meetings, he didn't feel like working out at the hotel gym.
Then one day last fall, he stepped on the bathroom scales and saw a number that he never thought he'd see: 220 pounds. "I thought, 'Oh my gosh, I've got to do something about this.' "
He has a baby daughter and another on the way and realized he needed to take better care of himself so he can be around to take care of them. He wanted to be able to run in the park with them and watch them grow up.
So Burns got the diet application for his iPhone and began to use it. He's careful about looking up the calories in restaurant meals, and he's not afraid to ask chefs to alter dishes. He makes sure he stays in hotels where there is a mini-refrigerator in the room so that he can keep low-calorie foods on hand. He runs in the treadmill at the hotel gym several mornings a week before he leaves for his meetings.
Burns has gone from 38-inch pants to size 34, and as a result he has to make another investment: a new wardrobe. "I now need to go out and get some new clothes that fit."
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