What is the best way to reduce weight?

Question

weight reduction

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

Make sure your calories in are less than your calories out.

To feel full while reducing your calories, eat more nutritious lower calorie foods (vegetables, fruits, whole grains, lean meats). Make sure to control your portion sizes though! Eating too much of healthy foods will cause weight gain. Drink lots of water (8-10 cups per day) and get at least 30 mins of exercise each day. The exercise can be as simple as a brisk walk or bike ride around your neighborhood, but you have to move fast enough to break a sweat. And at least 3 times a week do some resistance training to build muscles. This will help speed up your metabolism. You don't need a gym membership or fancy equipment to do this. Good old push-ups, crunches and squats will do.

Answer 3

Reduce eating

Answer 4

If you want to loose excess weight,you need to modify your diet to some extent by cutting down on calories. But make sure that it is nutritious, or else it will only increase your appetite and make you feel hungry, when your main goal is trying to loose weight. Exercising regularly is equally important. More info on a weight loss diet and exercises to loose weight at http://tinyurl.com/jax5h

Answer 5

By learning all you can....

Losing weight really is as simple as basic addition and subtraction. If the calories you eat add up to more than what you burn in a given time period, you will gain weight. Conversely, if you eat fewer calories than you burn, you will lose weight. Depending on your size and activity level, the number of calories will vary quite a bit. The secret is finding your “break even” calorie intake level. For most people, the “ball park” figure will be around 1800 to 2000 calories per day. If you are larger than average, this number will be higher, lower if you are smaller than average. Metabolic rate can have an effect on these numbers as well. Exercise plays an important role also, as this can increase the number of calories you burn by quite a bit as well as increasing your metabolic rate.

If you want a generally healthy diet that’s easy to follow and avoids hunger, the one I recommend will do the job very well. You can fill up and still lose weight. Eat lots of fresh vegetables as they contain very few calories yet are full of good nutrition. The less you cook them, the more nutrition they retain. Stick with whole grains, as they tend to be better for you and don’t turn to sugar as readily as processed grains do. For example, whole grain bread is much better for you than plain white bread. Eat a variety of fruit on a daily basis. Avoid empty carbs, fats, and sugars…. Examples: junk food and soda. If you feel you need protein to build muscle, add some chicken or fish to your diet. Avoid beef and dairy products, the cons outweigh the pros.

If you can’t get your mind into the ‘eat to live; don’t live to eat’ mode, you should probably read this short article on the psychology behind overeating:
http://www.geocities.com/seabulls69/weightloss.html

Healthy links:
Calorie calculator:
http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/calories.htm
BMI calculator:
http://chetday.com/bodymassindex.htm
Protein, fats, and carbs info:
http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/changingshape5.htm
General health info:
http://www.burnthefat.com/
http://www.drmcdougall.com
http://www.chetday.com
http://www.phifoundation.org
Sugar info:
http://www.drmcdougall.com/misc/2006nl/sept/sugar.htm

Answer 6

Weight increase is because of food and genetic factors. If you reduce your food's fat content and consume as little as possible to sustain yourself, you will automatically reduce weight. Any artificial means will make you gloat again if you stop it.

Answer 7

The only thing that worked for me was drinking lots of water, cutting my portion size and walking. I sometimes lift light weights. there is no miracle diet, trust me, i have tried them all.

just listen to your body and stop eating when you start to get full. I eat anything I want, I just stop eating when I start to feel it in my stomache. I drink lots of water and do light exercising. so far I have lost 20 pounds ( in about 3 months) . I have 40 more pounds to go...............good luck

Answer 8

Are you just sick of the standard diet plans had been soon after the diet regime finish the extra lbs are just coming and coming following finish the diet? Are you experience the truth that as soon as your physique will get used to a diet regime then this diet gets to be less efficient in excess of time due to the fact your entire body adjusts to compensate?

Answer 9

I tried running every morning and I didn't lose much weight, however, when I went back to playing competitive sports my metabolism levels increase and I gradually lost a stone.

Answer 10

after breakfast stick to water

Answer 11

From breakfast, go ahead and beverage orange juice. But throughout all of those other day, focus on water as opposed to juice or soda