Need gut to dissappear!?

Question

I understand cardio is excellent for you, however I am unable to run and do not own a bike. What would be some good ways to lose about 10lbs. Specifically in the mid section?

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

Do you drink beer? If you do, giving up that alone will help.
Do you eat healthy, how old are you?? Do you get any exercise?
Take a walk a few nights a week and eat an apple every afternoon, maybe with a chunk of cheese. Eat hard cooked eggs for breakfast with a piece of fruit. No bagels or muffins or skipping breakfast. Have a piece of fruit or some carrots or celery or a yogurt mid morning. A serving of dairy is supposed to help women to lose more in the mid section, maybe you can prove it helps men too. Get a good portion of protein in for lunch with salad as a filler.
Men drop it quick. I bet you can lose 10 in a month.
Good Luck

Answer 3

situps, lying on your back and doing leg raises, pedaling an invisible bicycle (while holding your hands on your hips lying on your back and your legs in the air above you). Those are all things that help. I can't run either because of a chronic lung problem, so I can possibly relate to your problem.
As far as diet is concerned, I think that is usually secondary, and if you are like most people you will not stay on a serious diet for a long time. Try doing something simple, for instance, if you take milk and sugar in your coffee, quit just one of the two - either the milk or the sugar. Or quit the milk and reduce the sugar slightly and gradually. Or if you tend to take 2 desserts with your meal, take only one - or if you have dessert 4 times a week, cut down to twice. In other words, don't try anything radical, and cut down on just one thing that you frequently do. In a year, you will notice a big difference. The exercise is what is most important, however.

Answer 4

Well there is a couple ways to loose your gut. First thing to do is diet. You have to cut some of the complex carbs out of your diet. So this would mean sweets, regular soda pop, white breads, alcohol etc. Then I recommend walking about an hour a day. You may, if you have some weights, get a weightlifting workout in. Lights weights and high repetitions. I hope this helps. Good luck.

Answer 5

Walking is a great way to burn calories! Start out at a pace and distance that you can handle. Eventually push yourself to go faster and farther. Vary your walking route so that it includes hills and maybe even do walk/run intervals. There are lots of books on fitness walking or do an on-line search. Make sure you buy a good pair of walking shoes and use them for your walking exercise only. It's bad for your feet to wear the same shoes for everything. Crunches (sit-ups) will help to tone your abs and give you that 6-pack look. Good luck!

Answer 6

You had a well run. Give up your existence to McDonalds now seeing that you'll supply in finally. Your simply going to be a type of humans you notice turning sideways to get into their fastfood resturant. Good success with weight problems!!

Answer 7

Hey John

DO a colon cleanse. The average american holds an average between 6-20 pounds. Hard to believe I know, but It's great for your health and you lose pounds too!

Best of health to you

Cheers

Answer 8

Dieting...watch what you eat ok? eat few carbs, and dont starve yourself...you dont need to run, but walk for a while every day....most importantly though is the diet. and yes, cardio and interval training works.

Answer 9

Cut out the snacking and drinking (alcoholic beverages). It'll go away on its own if you do these two things long enough.

Answer 10

It's hard to do, but many sit-ups and crunches.