I Want to loose 80 lbs in 8 months...?

Question

I am looking to loose 80 lbs in 8 months...its very reasonable and doabli in my opinion. So far my game plan is to excersize 3-4 times a week and only take in 700 calories a day...What do you All thinkg?! Any results with the same plan?

Answer 1

That may be a little optimistic, but not too far off the mark. Here are some ideas to help.

On Yahoo!Answers I find certain questions being asked repeatedly which is simply a reflection of new people participating. 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

Your body is going to go into starvation mode, and hang on to fat as best it can. A large portion of the weight you lose will be muscle. Then you are going to gain weight back, but it is all going to be fat. Figure out your daily calorie maintenance level and eat about 500 calories fewer than that. The human body was not meant to gain or lose weight quickly.

Also, 80 pounds in 8 months is way too much weight to lose in a the time you are giving your self in a healthily manner. Unless you are very (120lbs or so) overweight, then the weight comes off faster.

Answer 3

well, I promise you will gain it all back and then some. so do it slowly. I am 48 tried la weight loss, and other types of diets. I am going to weight watchers. I can eat literally anything I want, I just have to cut down sizes. I have been going for 4 weeks and I have lost 8 lbs. it is safer to loose no more than 1-2 lbs in a week so it stays off, plus you can do it for the rest of your life. good luck

Answer 4

700 calories a day is too few, it will cause your metabolism to slow down, go for around 1500-2000 calories and spread it out over 5 meals to keep your metabolism up. also, try to eat foods that have a low GI score http://www.prevention.com/article/0,5778,s1-4-62-658-2636-1,00.html and foods that are healthy for you... and 80 lbs is a little aggressive, but doable... you might not make the full 80, but you should be able to come close... don't be upset if you don't reach the full goal, be happy with what you accomplished.

Answer 5

You don't have to starve yourself. This is what I would suggest:
-Eat less fat and sugar and drink more water (always order water and skip dessert).
-Do 20-30 minutes of cardio before breakfast every morning (any exercise that will raise your heart rate will do).
-Work out with weights 3-4 times a week (let the muscles repair before you work them out again).
-Get plenty of sleep (6-8 hours a night).
-Take a multi-vitimin every day.

If you are consistent, the 80 pounds will be history. The problem is, most people don't have the self-control to be consistent for 8 months. Good luck!

Answer 6

700 cal a day and you will starve to death or suffer irreversable malnutrition side effects. Join weight watchers..count your points and you CAN lose that much weight. I did and on little very little excersise lost 125 lbs in 12 months.... Good luck, but be smart about it.

Answer 7

Check out this book Eating to Live. It is a book about loosing a lot of weight fast, and in a healthy way. I saw it here.
http://www.recipes-for-a-healthy-home.com/healthynutritionbooks.html

Answer 8

id think ur going to hurt your body with only 700 calories!

Answer 9

MAKE SURE YOU TAKE A WOMANS VITAMIN TO HELP OUT AND MAKE SURE YOU DONT LOOSE OUT BEING THAT YOU ARE GONNA GO ON 7OO CALORIES A DAY.

Answer 10

do what i do, work out a good while and eat well about twice a day, so you dont go snacking on randam stuff, i didt it for about two weeks and i lost about 10 punds... try it out... lol