I need to take better care of myself but don’t know where to start.

I am 45, male. I need to start taking better care of myself but don’t know where to start. I was in great shape 13 years ago. I’m 6’2″ 245lbs. What is a good diet, are there examples I can look up?

It is great to hear that you are taking the first step towards a healthier lifestyle. It is hard to recommend something without knowing much of anything about your daily habits. According to your stats, you have a BMI of 31, which puts you in a borderline obese range.

If you are curious, you can figure out your BMI here. Based on this BMI, it may be prudent to try to lose some weight in order to decrease your BMI to the healthy range of 18.5-24.9. At your height, this would mean a weight of 194 lbs.

This obviously is a drastic change from your current weight. In order to not get discouraged, do not focus on the final goal, but instead on increments of 5-10 lbs. Remember that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a signal step; however, it takes 1000 miles of steps to complete the journey.

Take a look at the Trans Theoretical Model for health behaviors to learn more about motivation to change habits, especially as pertains to diet and exercise. To answer the question of what to actually eat, Ken put a great tool up that will give you all of that information based on your goals.