I started a healthy diet and started exercising approx. 7 day's ago, how long before I see changes in my body?

Question

I am 35 years old and have 4 children, would like to lose 50 pounds before next summer. any suggestions? Please help!!!!

Answer 1

You sound motivated and you are giving yourself a realistic amount of time to achieve your goal. 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. Here are some aggressive but healthy ideas.


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

Yup. Im on a diet right now and the first days went great. I was eating very healthy foods and then like on the 4th or 5th day i started craving sweets. And then i started eating the sweets and craved more. Whatever you do... stick to ur diet plan and don't give in and eat sweets because thats what i did and once you have like a little piece of a chocolate bar you will want more.

Answer 3

You will probably start feeling changes in your body by the end of the second week for sure, and you will start seeing changes in the mirror at about 3 weeks of habitual dieting. The key is to keep the healthy eating and exercise a routine, and practicing it daily and having it become part of your life is when youll see the results

Answer 4

i just want to say congrats on the healthy diet and i hope you stick to it. Just eating healthy alone may take 2 - 6 weeks depending on height/weight etc. 'Apple' shapes will deffinately see a more quick change then "Pare" shape people. If you walk 30 minutes 3-6 days a week then you will see changes alot faster. Good Luck :D

Answer 5

Two weeks ago I started the Adkins diet. I have more energy than I thought possible. I am 33 and in the 15 days since I started, I've lost 11 pounds! I know I am on the right track. People are already noticing my loss! Lots of salads, fish, meat, cheese, and you can have REAL ranch dressing & mayo!!!! And bacon!!!! I also started riding my bike for cardio.

Answer 6

Well if you keep it up you should lose 50 pounds and more by next summer. But you probably won't see results until about 4 to 5 weeks into your routine assuming you keep it up.

Answer 7

.After a week or 2 of exercising you will start feeling the changes in your body but it takes about 3 weeks to see the process made in the mirror

Answer 8

do the horizontal polka missionary style for an hour and 7 minutes

Answer 9

it depends on your food intake....you need to watch your diet and what kind of food you eat!!..plus exercise!!!
in my case...almost a month before i see changes in my tummy....and in my weight.....i do sit ups 100x a day...just keep it up....!!!

Answer 10

instead of a margarita opt for tequila on the rocks with a lime wedge