is 37 pounds alot to lose?

Answer 1

If you are motivated and want to lose it over a period of a few months it is very possible.

On Yahoo!Answers I find the same questions being asked repeatedly. A couple of common question amounts to "How do I lose weight," or more specifically, "How do I lose abdominal fat?" I have gotten very positive responses from my answers when I paused to reply (and now beginning to get "It works!" emails that are very gratifying. I like helping people)... so have recently decided to put a good solid answer on my Yahoo!360 Blog (September 10) that I can point people to. These are my thoughts as a physician and athlete.

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

No- I just lost 35 lbs on walking(2 times a week) and 3 days a week excercise. I cut out snacks at night (I drink soymilk instead or go for a diet soda) and four because I never make 5 06 six, small meals a day- I have not eaten bread in weeks! I have a soyprotien drink in early morn. meat/cheese salad about noon, a vege or protien snack at afternoon and veges and meat at dinner with the family-When you hit it you'll be rockin! Clothes are a whole new thing! And if I can do it! Just stay away from carbs and do most of your protien i n the morn- its not strict-really- but it works! GOOD LUCK! And when I lost 10-I got a gift-20-I got a facial-35- I got that botox I wanted! 60lbs- and I'll get there you unbelievers! I'm down to a misses size 12- I get a tiny tatoo---no you can't see it!!! ;0)

Answer 3

In my opinion 37 pounds is not a lot to lose. I lost 30 pounds but I did it over the course of almost a year. You lose the weight to quickly and rest assured you will put the weight back on in a short amount of time. By losing it over a period of time you stand the chance of not putting it back on. I lost the weight 18 months ago and still haven't put it back on. Plus I eat low carb and that helped pull the weight off too. No sugars!

Answer 4

It depends on your current height and weight. I have lost 32 pounds starting July, 2006. I started out at 248. So, 37 pounds for me hasn't been a lot to lose.

If I can be of further assistance, let me know.

[e-mail]
http://www.geocities.com/pktull

Answer 5

No its not alot to lose. You hear about women all the time losing way more than that. Just set your goal for 10 lbs at a time, and you will lose it in no time. Add water, fruits and veggies to your diet and exercise to your plan. 2 lbs a week is a healthy way to lose weight. You will be 27 lbs slimmer by Christmas if you do this! YOU GO GIRL!! You can do it!

Answer 6

Not at all. If you diet and exercise, you can easily lose 37 pounds in six months.

Answer 7

Hi. No. It may seem like it, but I have a friend who just dropped over 40lbs and it wasn't all that hard. If you have been working on this for a while, go to Weight Watchers. The group support really will help you and you can get rid of that weight faster than you imagine. And think how beautiful you will look!

Answer 8

Yes, it is quite a lot of weight.
Shoot for losing an average of 2 pounds per week and you'll be done in less than a year.

Answer 9

Depends on your height and present weight. If you are 5'-6 and you weigh 137 pounds, then yes. If you are 5'-6 and weigh 337 pounds, then go for it, you'll feel a lot better.

Answer 10

Not really considering there are so many obese people waddling around
But if your yourself? It will seem like a huge obstacle
take one day, one week at a time and the pounds will come off with exercise, diet and patience

Answer 11

Depends on how much you weigh right now and what this amoung of weight loss will do to your overall health

Check a BMI indicator for your healthy levels (age/height/weight) and this will give you a better idea