What is the fastest way to lose about ten pounds?

Question

I'm about ten pounds heavier then I want to be. I need to lose this weight fast! Has anyone gone on a crash diet that worked? If so, what did you do?

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 want to do it fast and unhealthy, or quickly and healthy? My advice: Do not go on a crash diet, do not starve yourself, do not do liquid diet. Every pound you lose will come back. What you need to do is create a caloric deficit each day to lose fat. It takes a 500 calorie deficit a day to lose 1 lb of fat a week.

Steps to lose ten pounds quicker:

Find your estimated Daily Caloric Needs: Go to www.apexfitness.com, click on fitness tools, click daily caloric needs. Enter information asked, get your DCN.
Divide you daily calories into 5-6 portions a day.
Ex: 1500 calories needed a day, divide your calories among 5 300 calorie meals/snacks.
Start exercising. Walking, jogging, running and biking at least 3 times a week can positively change your body composition and your fitness.
I would also recommed resistance training with free weights or machines. I have found circuit training 2-3 times a week to be the most efficient way for females to weight train for fat loss goals. This consists of doing 8-10 exercises for the entire body, one consecutively after the other for one, two or three sets depending on your level of fitness. Do each exercise for 30-60 seconds, then move onto the next one.
This combination of nutrition, cardio and resistance training is the triad that can lead to the acheivement of your fitness goal.

Jeff Bomberger AFAA-CPT

Answer 3

I have gone on crash diet after crash diet to lose just a few pounds. The thing is you gain it back. The past time I quit drinking all Caffeine products. Coke...Pepsi...even diet ones. I only drink water and run every day. I lost 10 lbs. in 2 weeks and I have keep it off for over a month. I ate whatever I wanted, just not too large of portions. GOOD LUCK!

Answer 4

Heres what to do: Eat healthful, and no junk meals! Try to consume culmination and vegtables their satisfactory for you and are delicous! Fruits---Strawberries,Pears,Pineapple,... Grapefruit,Cantaloupe,Raspberries, Blackberries,Oranges, and so on. Vegtables--Green Peas/Green Beans, Broccoli, Cauliflower,Carrots, Celery, Corn, Potatoes, Squash, Cucumber, and so on. Whole Grains---breads, pastas, rice, and so on. I am a whole healthful eater, and I misplaced five kilos in a single week simply by excersing and consuming healthful. If you've gotten a candy enamel, check out Frozen Yogurt or Edy's Slow Churned no sugar further ice cream. I love love love pasta, and Ronzoni Smart Taste Pasta, is satisfactory and outstandily healthful(dont fairly recognize if thats a phrase, tehehe) But I desire that is helping! Good success!

Answer 5

I accidentally lost 8 pounds in a couple of weeks by becoming a vegetarian. No meat, and DO NOT drink soda. Not even diet. It makes you bloated and hungry.

Those two things alone will make a huge difference, as long as you don't eat cheese pizza all day.

Answer 6

Me too! I run everyday, 3 times a day. About 3 miles a day. Start at about 1 mile day and then gradually increase. I lost 5 pounds in 1 week and a half. So in 3 weeks you'll be at your ideal weight. GOOD LUCK!

Answer 7

limit yourself to 1200 - 1500 calories per day. Drink lots of water to help fend off hunger. Most importantly spend as much time as possible doing cardiovascular exercises. There are many of these types of workout programmes available on the web and fitness periodicals.

Answer 8

take a good probiotic daily

Answer 9

i designed a diet for my son, he lost 30 pounds in three weeks, he needed to loose a lot of weight, but his eating habits really sucked-- fast food, soda, more fast food , soda ect. first you need to be sure of your health, next you need to look at what you are eating now and how much of it is useless calories, for example, do you eat a lot of food with saturated fat? chips fries ect. do you eat out a lot? do you get the right amount of exercise? ok now? get a bottle of vitamin b-complex with c, take three a day, you will have very yellow urine if you are healthy if not keep taking them. you have to be active enough to consume more calories than you are taking in. my son started at about 5000 calories a day-- i put him at 1500-2000, he went to 1200 in the next two weeks he was only on it for three weeks. look at the nutrition lable of everything you eat. proportion your food. don't put more than the size of your fist of anything on your plate. if you need to snack during the day eat things like fruit or jello sugar free if you can handle that. try to cut all soda and most pasta and breads out. if you must eat them eat oat bread or things made with oats and no fast food fries ect. watch the saturated fats on the lable--if it came from an animal it will have saturated fats. polyunsaturated fats are better, but keep them as low as you can. water-flavored or bottled is great, and no high protein type drinks, the calorie content is crazy on most of them. eat most of your food in the form of fruits and veggies but don't think you can't have normal meals, just smaller portions. next do some form of exercise at least three times a day. my son likes to go to the gym to play basketball so he went for two hours-one in the morning and one in the afternoon, but remember you will not loose weight unless you consume less calories that you use every day, and the more you use the more you loose!

Answer 10

Low carbs, no salt in your food, alot of water, and water pills will help you lose ten pounds quickly. You will probably gain it back once you start back eatiing carbs and salt though.