How can I lose weight????

Question

I need to drop 10 punds health wise. Can you help me???

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

Check my website: www.abmeal.com. I am 107 lbs now, but I was 1 34 lbs when I discovered the method. On the cover you'll see a picture of me at 112 lbs. The book is "Lose Weight or Stay Trim Eating Pasta, Rice or Bread" . I am 46 years old and 5 feet 4 inches. I lost about 30 lbs total. I was so happy that I could still eat carbs without much sacrifice that I wrote a book on it.

If you don't exercise you can lose 1 to 2 pounds a week on my method.

Best wishes!

Donna T.

Answer 3

Sadly, the only safe, permanent and healthy way is to watch your caloric intake and exercise. Safe weight loss is about 1-2 lbs/wk; more than that isn't going to stay off!

Note that I did *not* say "diet." You don't have to give up ANY food you love, but you may need to eat LESS of those things we all love but aren't so good for us. You can eat pretty much unlimited quantities of most veggies (except corn, legumes and potato-types), so go for the rabbit food!

As for exercise, if you don't currently work out, check with your doctor before hitting the gym. My personal faves for exercise are swimming (awesome full-body workout with no impact), biking (indoor, outdoor and spin), and elliptical machines, plus weight-lifting. Pretty much everyone needs to lift; do some Web searching or hook up with a personal trainer for a one-on-one session to give you some basics. Muscle is much denser than fat, so as you lift you'll be losing inches as you tone. Besides, the more muscle mass you have, the more calories your body burns every minute of the day!

Weight Watchers has an amazing set of resources for people trying get those last 5-10 lbs off. Check them out on-line.

Good luck!

Answer 4

This is what my experience would recommend:

You need to do 200 minutes of cardio a week.

Do 10 planks for 45 secs each for your lower abs, and bicycle crunches for the rest.

Do 5-10 minutes of cardio to warm up, then do your weight training, followed by 30 to 60 minutes more of cardio.

The best time to eat is just after your workout within an hour when your metabolism is raging.

Good luck and stick at it. I have lost over 20 lbs in 3 months.

Answer 5

Both dieting and exercises are essential for losing weight. By dieting I mean that you should balance your daily food intake. Take only as much Carbohydrates and fats which you can burn in your daily acitivity. Each gram of Carbs and Proteins produces 4 Calories of energy while each gram of fat produces 9 calories. Take proteins in addition to carbs and fats because they are essential for building muscle mass. The best diet, in my opinion, would be milk, juices, fruits and vegetables for vitamins and minerals. And eggs, fish, chicken for proteins.

Isotonic or Weight training exercises are good for building muscle mass and toning up muscles but for losing weight a much better option is to do aerobic exercises. You can only perform 10, 20 or 50 repetitions of isotonic exercises while you can easily do aerobic exercises for half an hour or more. Secondly for losing weight, if you are hitting a particular area, it doesn’t mean that you’ll lose weight only there. When you start losing fat the process generally involves your entire body fat. Aerobic exercises are also good for your circulation, heart and respiration. The best aerobic exercises in my opinion are: running, cycling, swimming and brisk walk.

Answer 6

Try the Atkins diet, watching your carb intake. It really does work and works fast. I was on it after I had my son and went from a size 10 to a size 3-4 in under a year. I didnt do anything else differently, just really watched my carb intake. And make sure you drink lots of water, you need to really cut down on if not completely cut out caffeine.

Answer 7

I started the slim fast diet and lost like 5 pounds so far. Combine that with some walking and choose healthier foods like fruits and veggies. Cut out all fast food and cokes. Take the stairs, instead of the elevator and park at the end of the parking lot and walk to the store, instead of trying to find the closest spot. Just keep moving. These small changes will pay off and you will feel better.

Answer 8

cut out all refined sugars, All white flour products, go whole grain, even your pastas. Don't eat white rice. Eat lots, and lots of vegetables both raw and cooked. Start every meal with a nice big green salad loaded with raw vegis and leafy green lettuce. Eat lower fat meats in moderation. Eat a nice healthy breakfast of a protein and a whole grain, perhaps a fruit. Drink plenty of water. Don't drink sodas unless they are diet. go for a 15 minute walk everyday.

Answer 9

The route which I'm gonna tell you is a bit tuff. However if you can continue with the diet I tell you, definitely you can drop more dan 10 pounds.

All you need to do is have Salad - as your Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner.

I'm sure you won't require any exercise as well.

Answer 10

Straight up - eat less and excercise more. That's the best way to do it.

Funny how you never see a fat person in a third world country, unless they're handing out relief aid, eh?

Answer 11

There is only one way to lose weight Stop eating so much food. especially high fat and sugar, limit calories, eat healthy and exercise. its as simple as that.