I weigh 240 at age 24. Want to lose weight quick. How much is too much to lose per week?

Question

I want to lose 5-7 lbs per week, Any body know good diets? And what is a good goal per week to set to lose?

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

1-2 lbs a week is optimal for losing weight.

That may seem like a small number, but that's how many pounds of FAT you will lose a week if you exercise and eat a limited calorie diet.

Anyone who embarks on a diet plan and exercise plan will see a dramatic drop of weight on the scale when they first start because of the water weight, but if you want to lose fat and be healthy, 1-2 lbs is what you need to start looking at instead of 5-7.

That may make you want to quit all together, and just by the way you worded your question, I can tell that you are not a patient person.

Trust me, I'm not either.

How tall are you ? How much muscle do you have ? How much do you work out ?

http://www.fitnessmagazine.com/fitness/multimedia.jhtml?multimediaId=/templatedata/fitness/multimedia/data/1130272109023.xml&catref=ftn57

Go there, put all your information in to see how many calories you need per day just to maintain your current weight, then subtract either 500-1000 (500 to lose a pound a week, and 1000 to lose two pounds a week) then start there.

There are many websites and magazines that will help you in your weight loss journey, aiding you in what foods are benefitial to your health, and which exercises will help tone your body faster.

Try to change your habits now, because if you start a diet and exercise plan just to lose the weight, you'll gain it ALL back and MORE if you go back to your eating habits now.

Try keeping a food journal for a week to see what exactly you're eating, where your troubled areas are, and try to change them. Don't take more than you can handle. Make this fun, exciting, and something new, not a chore.

Good luck.

Answer 3

For the first week, you could lose 5-7 lbs easy because part of it is water. After that, losing 1-2 lbs of fat is the healthy way to go. If you include a lot of training and exercise that let you gain muscle, you might not lose weight at the beginning because muscle weighs heavier than fat for the same amount. Then you should measure yourself to see if your size is shrinking.

Don't go for all the fad diets, the most basic rules are the best diets, i.e. cutting down on fat, sugar, and eat a lot of fruit and vegetables. Also don't skip meals. If you choose a diet that don't give you a balanced nutrition, your body somehow will naturally crave for more food, and that is why most people fail after a short time. Long time self control is the most important thing.

Answer 4

On average, the first week you'll lose the most - probably about 3- 5 pounds. The following weeks an average of 2 pounds. With your schedule, you might lose more in the beginning - unless you have always been physically active. Another thing you might want to do is not eat anything after 6 p.m. Personally, when I put forth as much effort as you are, I can expect to lose about 8 pounds the first week, but I'm a big girl and don't have much muscle. But after that first week I lose about 2-3 pounds.

Answer 5

I know when you want to lose weight, you want to get it off as fast as you can. 5-7 lbs. a week is a lot and the faster you take it off the more you're likely to put it back on and then some. I think I heard 3-5 lbs. a week is pretty good. The nutritionist I had had me do it in steps. At first she said try to lose one lb a week then she upped it to 3. I ended up losing 126 lbs. by following what she said and I also got a job that kept me moving around which really, really helped. I started losing weight when I was around 19 or 20 years old. Now I'm going to be turning 23 in about 2 months and I've kept it off and hoping to lose more. But like I said, my job really helped me to become more active. I used to weigh 325 lbs. and thought I'd never have the motivation to get it off. Having a nutritionist helped to motivate me and it felt good having her and the doctor say you lost weight with a big smile on their faces. I wish you lots of luck.

Answer 6

If you go with a strict 1500 calorie diet, you will loose a pound a week just like that. Excercising of course will boost this. A pound of fat is 3000 calories, so if you eat just 500 calories less a day than you will save a pound a week.

1500 calories allows for a nice balanced diet that . Drink a vairety of sugarfree brewed teas, or water (with lemon). Just taking out the calories from the drinks should make a big difference.

Good luck!

Answer 7

No, that is too much to lose per week. You should aim to lose no more than 2-3lb per week, because otherwise you will find yourself losing muscle as opposed to fat. I know it will be time consuming, but you must be patient. If you do it properly in the first place, you will be able to keep the weight off and that is the difficult part. Take care and good luck : )

Answer 8

One of my sons was about your weight at 15-17. He is so skinny now, and I thought he was just big boned. Not sure about a quick fix, but I can tell u what he done--he is total muscle now.
He had a "diet" yet he still ate!
He quit all "fried food", quit carbohydrates, quit the white bread, macaroni and cheese---anything starchy.
I can tell u what he eats, peanut butter--not the normal one but the one Natural with extra protein--it is in a flat jar at Wal M for 2.66 on whole wheat bread. He pigs out on most whole grain cereal -uses skim milk. He eats a lot of meat - baked or cooked with no oil. He eats a lot of tuna, sardines, and oysters.
He works out at least 3 or more times a week--at the gymn, walking or running.
He also took Hydroxycut without the caffeine kind.
Hope any of this helps.
My doctor told me he prefers a weight loss of a pound / week, so be careful, good luck!

Answer 9

The best way to lose weight is to eat 6 small meals, spread out evenly throughout waking hours. You dont want them to be too high in calorie intake.
Just make healthy choices. Fruits, Vegetables, Bread.

Dont stress on the "what to eat" so much. Just stick to what you know is healthy.

When you eat large meals your body anticipates a famine coming and starts to store fat for use later. Because you are eating 6 small meals throughout the day, the body doesnt react that way, and as long as you stay away from the "junk food" you will lose weight Guaranteed.

AND it will be a VERY healthy way to lose weight. No gimmicks. Just plain science.

Answer 10

2-3 lbs a week is most feasible for making the weight loss more permanent. Any more than that and you run a great risk of gaining it back. You can't trick evolution. Slow and steady wins the race. Diets don't work. Just eat foods that are as close to nature as possible and limit your consumption of manufactured food.

Answer 11

I think that they recommend losing 1-2lbs a week is what is health. When I first started dieting I lost a lot the first few weeks then I got on this 1-2lbs a week. Good luck and stick with it even if its not coming off as fast as you like it will you just have to be determined.