trying to lose weight but my metabolism is nothing, how do i jump start it to start losing weight?

Answer 1

First, 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 questions amount 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

Hi Jeannette,
If you are truly inactive, then start getting active gently. The very best and gentle way is to start walking every day. Like a couple of miles.If you are healthy, you can do two miles in about 30 minutes. This is important because it takes about 30 min. to get the metabolism up. Doing this at least every other day and if possible, every day, will keep your metabolism higher than it was. You should begin to loose weight. Try very hard to NOT increase your food intake. Your emotional state does improve with exercise also.
Butch

Answer 3

Simple starts (this is how I started and I lost 27 pounds eventually):

1) Park farther away when you drive somewhere, so you have to walk a little extra to get to the door of the place you're going. The mall is a good example. This is a small step that shows how easy it is to get going.

2) Don't drive or ride if it will take less than 10 minutes to walk.

3) If you're going less than 3 flights up or down, take the stairs instead of the elevator.

4) Reduce fat intake somewhat, because they are much harder to convert into energy than protein or carbohydrate. Don't go nuts or you'll just get crazy hungry. Ease into it.

5) Try not to increase your food intake as you start exercising more.

Once you feel these are under control or at least going well, you can start taking the next small steps. None of these is a butt-kicker, so it shouldn't be hard to start these.

Answer 4

The best way to spike your metabolism is to start exercising regularly. What you are really trying to do is to replace your fat with muscle. Muscle requires calories to maintain, while fat doesn't require any calories. That is why it is easier to gain fat than to gain muscle fibers. Don't let the scale be your only tool that determines if you are loosing weight. When you replace your muscle for fat, you might not see the changes in the scale to be that gratifying. Look at yourself in the mirror. It is important to take your before and after pictures. Measure your waist, arms, chest,etc. Remember make the exercises fun, go slowly, one day at a time, and reduce or increase your caloric intake by 250 grams a day to reach your goal in a safe and healthy way. Good luck. Need help let me know.

Answer 5

Walking is one of the best exercises for losing weight. It is also an exercise for maintaining the metabolism rate and muscle mass in the body as we age. You also need to reduce your calorie intake by modifying your diet. More info on a weight loss diet and exercises available at http://tinyurl.com/jax5h

Answer 6

drink ice cold water a lot, exercise, and eat a lot of fruit do this for about 2 months and you metabolism will be high.

Answer 7

You are my twin! I have the same problem and I can relate to you what everyone has said to me: "Exercise, exercise, exercise" and "drink eight eight ounce glasses of water a day."

Eat less, exercise and drink lots of water.

Isn't that the pits? The key is to mentally put yourself in a healthful mode and eat to live, not live to eat. Good luck!

Answer 8

instead of eatting about 2 or 3 meals a day like most folks eat 6-7 small meals everyday.

Answer 9

Restrict your food intake drastically will slow down your metabolism

Answer 10

a handful of unsalted pumpkin seeds make for a healthy mid day snack theyre rich in magnesium which helps lower blood pressure

Answer 11

jump on a trampoline for 29 minutes