What is a semi-healthy way to crash diet?

Question

Or some diet tips besides staying away from the usual suspects and exercising more?

Answer 1

Here are some ideas from my 360 Blog September 10

There is no site specific way of losing fat... the old myth about working your abs to burn belly fat isn't true. To get rid of love handles, you need to lose overall fat. That happens with exercise and watching your diet. More on that below.

The most effective way to lose fat is aerobic exercise in the "moderate" fat-burning range, ideally first thing in the morning before you eat. When you wake your body is ready to burn fat and your levels of growth hormone are highest at that time. Later in the day it can take up to 30 minutes just to put your body into a fat-burning mode.

Another overlooked way to burn fat is by lifting weights. Skeletal muscle has very high caloric needs... almost twice that of adipose (fat) tissue. Put on a little muscle and you will burn calories all day even at rest. Be aware that skeletal muscle weighs more, so with this approach you may see your weight increasing while your body fat is melting away. Not realizing this often stresses folks who think they should be losing weight as a measure of fitness. Forget the scale, look in the mirror and you will be happy.

For diet, keep a diary for a couple of weeks counting calories, grams of protein, and grams of fat intake. It is easy with online sources of nutritional information (type the name of the food and calories into the Google search engine) and packaging labels. That will let you quickly figure out where the fat is coming from in your diet.

Fat gives you 9 calories per gram. So take the number of grams of fat, multiply by 9, then calculate what percentage the fat calories are of your total daily calories. Restricting the calories from fat to about 20% of your total intake is ideal for a maintenance diet... that isn't overly restrictive. Of note, you need some fat in your diet. For instance, the body uses fat to produce hormones. Once you have a picture of how to modify your diet, you can drop the diary and just go back to it occasionally if you are wanting to tweek things further.

There is a subset of questions that goes further and asks about "How to get a six-pack?" The answer is the same. Six-packs are 20% abdominal exercise and 80% diet. There is one caveat... abdominal muscles will form in the position that you exercise them, so be certain to pull them tightly toward your spine while doing crunches, etc. Also, during most lifting, the "core is active" which means that you should be stabilizing with contracted abs then too. Fail to do this and the abs will form, but bulging outward and the result is not attractive.

If you are trying to build muscle as a way to lose fat, then you may need to increase total calories and specifically your protein intake. I target about 0.8 g of protein per pound of body weight each day when actively building. That is far more protein than most people need in their diets.


Aloha

Answer 2

Lauren: this is definitely different. I'm 57, yet the same weight as when I was 17. Whenever I start putting on a few kilos, I become more careless about where I eat. I live in Asia and it is easy to get food poisoning here. A good case of diarrhoea and I can drop a few kilos within a few days. Of course, any more and it could get dangerous to your health. The great thing about this approach is that you lose your appetite.

The only long term solution to losing weight or maintaining your existing weight is balancing intake and outake and constant exercise is the ticket. Use the stairs instead of elevator, walk every opportunity you have. Don't use maids! Do your own dishes. Don't buy larger clothes: force yourself to live within your existing wardrobe. Your clothes will remind you when you are failing.

If you have problems getting sick, try outright fasting. Pretend you are on a hunger strike for some worthy cause or you are a famous actress slimming for a part. You need to give yourself a very strong purpose for the fasting.

Answer 3

To lose weight, a person has to reduce the calorie intake by some amount by modifying their diet. A diet without sufficient nutrients will only increase the appetite of the person trying to lose weight. Since most people combine a diet with an exercise plan, additional nutrients are required for the growth of muscles required to increase the metabolic rate required for long term weight loss. More information available at http://tinyurl.com/jax5h

Answer 4

One healthy way is to be sure to track your calories with a food journal because many people don't know if they are getting too many or not enough. Either is harmful for weight-loss. I think that eating more filling but lower cal foods can make it much easier to stay at 1200-2000 calories depending on height, gender, and activity level. Fluff foods are killer to a diet because they don't fill you up but they contain so many cals!

I also read that wearing a weighted vest during exercising helps to increase caloric burn. Just watch out that you don't damage your joints by starting into it too fierce. You can google "weighted vest" for suppliers. I've heard to start out with 10% of body weight.

Hoodia is also a great natural appetite suppressant.

Good luck!

Answer 5

Never heard of a healthy crash diet.sorry!

Answer 6

Drink more water and NO soft drinks at all. No donuts or pastries. Eat 6 (small) meals aday. No fried foods. Maybe once a week. More veg. and fruit. Good luck and God bless you.

Answer 7

The best crash diet is a strict water and grapefruit diet. Not only do you still get certain nutrients from the fruit, and the natural fat burning enzymes in the grapefruit will burn any excess fat in your body.

Answer 8

you need to follow a daily exercise routine and eat healthy - work out more and eat less!

Answer 9

calorie reduction works the fastest, exercise burns very few calories, and makes you hungry, it is good for your heart though.

Answer 10

there are none just change your lifestyle eat healthy :)