Can it be done before the end of the year?

Question

I recently started losing weight after getting a new job in a plant that i noticed right away was putting my body in action. I was moving around and sweating ALOT. I was told that work combined with watching what I ate and excersing as much as possible throughout the week would help me in the end. I started right at 199 pounds (I was over 200 for a long time so to start brand new under 200 was already a boost for me) and i am doing all those things and so far in the last 2 weeks I have lost 8 pounds. I would like to set a goal of around 175 but take it to the level that I can wear every piece of clothing in my closet unless they become too big to wear because i have gotten too small. Can anyone recommend any other ideas to help me succeed once and for all and keep it up the rest of the year?

Answer 1

Congratulations on your progress. You may be taking it off a little faster than is optimal. Here are some suggestions from my 360 Blog of September 10.

Don't target losing more than about 2 lbs per week. If you try to lose faster, your body will go into "starvation mode" and get very stingy about burning calories while at the same time very efficient about storing any calories that you do provide. And it will make you feel awful.

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.

To lose a pound of fat, you need to eliminate about 3500 calories. You can do this by burning more with exercise or by modifying your diet to reduce intake. If you do a Google search on say, "swimming calories" you will quickly find a website with tables of calories burned for a given exercise. You can use such lists to estimate how many calories you are burning up with your routine.

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 work 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

Cut out all white bread and pasta except on rare occasions. Cut out sugar and sweets except as a rare treat. Cut out potatoes...maybe as a reward only and lots of veggies. The more raw the better for you and juicing will help a lot! Barley Greens mixed with OJ every day keeps the belly and intestines clean and helps with weight loss too! Good girl!

Answer 3

If whatever occurs my puppies are coming with me in which I pass. If they cant I wont pass. If the top of the sector is coming why kill the puppy. God will handle all folks at the moment. I suppose they have got discovered their lesson.

Answer 4

That is awesome...I wish I was you. Drinking green tea is good for weightloss because of the antioxidants.