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
2006-10-31 03:38:29
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answer #1
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answered by Anonymous
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I am sorry to say that any diet that makes you feel weak is unhealthy. Your diet is probably too low in iron or protein, or some other essential nutrient(s). I do not know if you are trying some "herbal" diet that passes itself off as healthy, but my wife and I have been there/done that. They zap your money and don't really work. Throw out the diet books and fads and go with more proven approaches such as a dietician and a personal trainer. No matter what people tell you to get you to buy the same herb supplements you can find in a dollar store or growing in your back-yard, you will need a diet that works for you and allows you to exercise. Diet without exercise is inevitable failure. Herbal-cure people tell you doctors have researched and created their products but really what they are selling you is caffeine, malt powder and vitamins and tell you basically to replace two of your meals with malt powder and take lots of caffeine and vitamins in their expensive pills and teas(duh-caffeine speeds up metabolism while the malt powder may as well be sawdust) to cause immediate results and the "feeling" of more energy, but you loose weight by starvation. So I hope you have not been caught up in that mess. Just get your team together of friends, family, and professionals who you know can help you and I know you will do great.
2006-10-30 21:51:37
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answer #2
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answered by RB 3
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Try cutting out all sweets for a while. I was able to do this for about 4 months and when I started eating sweets again I was able to limit myself, something I was never able to do before (I'm a chocoholic). Find a fun activity that gets you up an doing something instead of sitting in front of the computer or TV for hours on end. I go roller skating every week, sometimes twice weekly if I can make time for it. If it's fun it doesn't feel like exercise.
2006-10-30 21:31:53
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answer #3
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answered by Anonymous
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Lose 10 pounds in 2 weeks??
There are some websites on the Internet, which promise you that you are going to lose 10 pounds in every 2 weeks. If you are good in math you will find that keeping these stats in mind, 260 pounds in a year. Losing 260 pounds is the figure, which is unbelievable and unexpected.
This kind of claims are planned just to cause clients to make impulsive decisions. When you gain weight, did you gained around 50 minds in two months? Certainly not. We gain weight in weight in small parts, which add up to our weight. This keeps on increasing with time.
I think you get what I mean to say. We normally gain weight in grams like 65 gram per week. With this stat you are going to gain around 7 pounds at the end of year.
This weight is so slow that you cannot measure it weekly. But in fur years you are going to gain around 28 pounds.
So how can you expect this weight to go in few days? You are going to lose the way you have gained it. So it will take time to lose weight. So you have to start losing weight systematically. You can lose weight by developing the good eating habits in you and nutritious foods.
2006-10-30 23:46:11
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answer #4
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answered by Anonymous
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Exercise is proven to bring more weight loss than dieting. Eat healthy, but plenty, and then start an exercise routine ... preferably doing something you enjoy or can learn to enjoy ... walking, bicycling, tennis, whatever.
Get a dog and walk it three times a day!!
2006-10-30 21:25:29
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answer #5
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answered by Pichi 7
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Go to weight watchers
2006-10-30 21:23:17
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answer #6
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answered by Sarah B 5
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There is this fantastic new invention called exercise
2006-10-30 21:25:11
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answer #7
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answered by Pauline 5
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