is there any healthy way to lose weight fairly quickly?

Answer 1

For all of the "quick and easy" weight loss diet pill suggestions, remember, if something sounds too good to be true... it probably is, particularly if you have to pay for it.


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

I'm in the same boat as you. I WANT to lose a LOT of weight pretty quick, but you know that's not going to happen unless you work your butt off. As of now I go to the gym every other day. Make sure you give youself a day for your muscles to relax. When I go to the gym I do an hour 1/2 cardio and half hour of weights. I will build on working on the weights more when I lose the weight. As for food, I eat well portion sized meals. I cut my portions in half. I'm a vegetarian, so it can be hard cause my fiance is not. But just make sure you buy healthy foods. Don't have any junk food , because that will create temptation. Remember to drink A LOT of water. That's the key. YOU NEED TO HYDRATE.

I know it can be really stressful to do this, and your body is going to hurt from working out, but just be patient. Nothing is going to be done soon. It depends how much you want to lose as well. If you want to lose 100 lbs like I do, then you should give youself at least a year. If it's half , then it's half a year.

Just be patient, and you should see it shed quickly.
(below is a link that i use to monitor what eat and how much i exercise , it should motivate you.)

Answer 3

I am an exercise physiologist. The best way to lose weight is 5-6 days a week participate in one-hour of cardio in order to lose weight. After you meet your goal-workout 3-4 days a week at 30 minutes to maintain that weight. Also, eat in smaller portions if you have a really big diet. Keep in mind the average person only loses 1-2lbs a week and it will take about 6-8 weeks before you begin to truly notice a difference so hang in there, it is working. You don't have to try some foo-foo diet unless you plan on sticking to that the rest of the time you'd like to be that size.

Answer 4

Keep up the exercises and healthy eating! Make sure to cut out sugars, unless they're natural sugars from fruits and such, cut out any carbonation (sodas), and such things. A helpful hint is to look at your food labels. Look to see how much sodium (salt) is in the product. Salt absorbs water and will not let you lose weight as fast. As for exercises, keep running, jumping jacks, dancing is great, swimming laps will definately have you lose weight. Also riding a bike will. Every day last summer, I went and rode my bike around the neighborhood for probably fifteen minutes or so and lost a TON of weight. Sit ups won't help you lose weight. In fact, it is a muscle-gaining exercise that will, well, pretty much only let you gain muscle which means you'll GAIN a little bit of weight. Whatever exercises you do, make sure you don't overdo it and make sure to STRETCH. That's right. No wimpy stretches either. They should be legit stretches that will help you gain flexibilty, which is another way to lose weight! I think losing that much weight will be healthy, considering the few months you have to do it. If you start feeling weak or tired, slow it down a little bit. Best if luck to you!!! :)

Answer 5

Depends on what you think is fairly quickly. I would just suggest cutting most of your carb intake, drinking a lot of water, obviously eating healthy, stuff like that. But don't forget that you should also be pretty active, too.

Answer 6

I really don't know of any way to lose weight very 'quickly' if you want to keep it off. The best way to lose weight is with diet & exercise.
Check out the site below (it's free) to design a diet & exercise plan for yourself. There are forums & everything.

Answer 7

walk a toy poodle for 41 minutes at 2 miles per hour

Answer 8

skip the burrito and order a taco salad instead

Answer 9

get tempting foods out of your home

Answer 10

strap a parachute to your back and spend 30 minutes skydiving over the volcanoes in tongariro national park new zealand

Answer 11

surf for real for 34 minutes