Have to lose!!?

Question

i need to lose at least 20 lbs. by 11/27! does anyone know the fastest way to do that? FAST!

Answer 1

Though people will promise that is possible, your goal is actually a bit too ambitious (see why in the text below). Here are some aggressive but realistic suggestions.


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

You might think about trying this book called "The Movie Star Diet" by Steve Simmons. It helped me lose thirty pounds in 2 1/2 months when I didn't think anything would work. My goal to begin with was only 20 lbs! It has a really easy plan to follow and an excellent workout as well.

Answer 3

That kind of weight loss is extremely unwise and can be dangerous. It will affect your hormones, your blood chemistry, and can even affect major organs, depending on the unsafe method you use. You'll also be much more likely to gain the weight back quickly, and the new weight will have a higher bodyfat ratio than the weight you're carrying now, which is also unsafe.

What makes you think you need to lose 20 lbs so quickly? If a doctor has prescribed it, s/he will also tell you how to do it. Otherwise, go slowly and begin to lose weight gradually--no more than 2 lbs. per week.

Answer 4

The only way I know to do this healty is a Cleanse Type of "diet" ....like a fast etc...a HEALTHY one.

The two products I recommend and have tried one not the other is:
a shake type mix (and that's all you drink all day VERY GOOD FOR YOU...ULTRA CLEAR *this is the one I have tried and is amazing*
OR
The Master Cleanser (I have not personally tried it..but my best friend has several times a year..and she usually looses about 15 to 20 lbs in about 10 days...) It's also called the lemonade diet...you can buy the little easy to read/make book at any health food store.
Other than that you are going the unhealthy route you know? :)
Good Luck!

Answer 5

May I ask why you want to do that? 20 lbs in less than 4 weeks is not healthy.

The best way is to ask boxers or wrestlers who go through this process to make the weight before their weigh-in. Let me remind you this involves extreme measures that will cause extreme dehydration. Most likely you'll lose a lot of muscle and water and gain most of the weight back in the form of fat.

But it is your body and the decision is your's to make. I can only recommend that a healthy way is to lose 1-2 lbs a week.

Answer 6

no wish i did know need to lose some myself

Answer 7

dont eat