What is the best way to loose weight?

Answer 1

I have been receiving a lot of e-mail lately about diet. In the past, I was never concerned about what I ate. I just went to the gym, trained hard, and that was the extent of my routine. Not until recently did I realize the power diet has over the way your body looks and performs. I believe that diet is at least 75% of the fitness equation. In this article, I'm going to describe in detail what I have learned about diet during my 12-week transition period.
When to Eat and How Often
This might sound strange, but you have to eat more often to lose fat and gain muscle. During my transition period, I never ate less than 6 meals a day.
• Try to eat every 2 to 3 hours.
• Do not eat complex carbohydrates after 6:00 p.m. or four to five hours before going to bed.
• Try to eat one gram of protein per pound of lean body mass on lifting days and .8 grams of protein per pound of lean body mass on non-lifting days.
• Never eat more than 70 grams of protein in one meal.
Carbohydrates
When I think of carbohydrates, I think of energy. Carbohydrates supply our bodies with the energy it needs to make it through a workout. Without an adequate supply of carbohydrates, the body goes into carbohydrate deprivation. This is called a state of ketosis (meaning our body is using protein as energy). This is not a good state to be in for long because it will rob the body of muscle tissue in an effort to create energy. On the other hand, if too many carbohydrates are consumed, they convert into stored fat. The idea is to consume just enough carbohydrates to make it through our workouts with sufficient energy. I have broken down carbohydrates into these three categories:
• Simple carbs: These are sugars, or quick energy. They are absorbed very quickly into the body. Ex. Anything with sugar, also fruit
• Complex carbs: This is where you get long-term energy for the day. These are long chained carbohydrates that brake down slower, giving us energy over a prolonged period of time. Ex. Oatmeal, potatoes, pasta, rice, breads
• Fibrous carbs: These are things like vegetables. I think of them as roughage in order to stay regular. Make sure you include them in you later meals when you can't eat complex carbs. They are also a good source of vitamins. Ex. Leafy vegetables like lettuce.
Protein
Proteins are the building blocks of our muscles. Without a sufficient amount of protein in our diet, our muscles will not have the raw materials that they need to build up, or even hang on to what is already there.
Net protein utilization: Not all protein is created equal. Different foods are absorbed more than others. For example, egg white protein is absorbed at 88%. That means we get about 9 eggs to our muscles. On the other hand, chicken breast are absorbed at 68%, meaning we get about 7 breasts to our muscles. It is imported to eat a wide verity of protein foods though; no one protein source has all the amino acids we need.
• Whey protein (100%): the best source of whey protein is from protein supplements. It is also absorbed very fast by the body, so it is best to take this when your body needs amino acids quickly: like right after a workout or when you first get up in the morning.
• Egg whites (88%)
• Fish (78%)
• Chicken breast (78%)
• Soy protein: My one bit of advice would be to try and stay away from soy protein. It is not absorbed very well by the body.
Fats
We normally think of fats as being bad. The fact is certain fats are essential to building muscle and carrying out various functions of the body. There are 2 fat types we need to be concerned about:
• Saturated fats: these are the bad fats. Avoid these fats as much as possible. You will find these types of fats mostly in meats
• Unsaturated fats: these are the good fats. They are a good energy source and help us build muscle. You can find from plant oils. Peanuts are also a good source.
Water
Do not under estimate the importance of water! If you are looking to get lean, water will be your best friend. Drink as much as you can and as often as you can. Also, it is very important to drink lots of water when you're eating large amounts of protein to clean urea from the system.
Vitamins & minerals
As resistance training athletes, we have a greater need for vitamins & minerals. When we workout and bring blood to our muscles it is important that our blood is full of those essential vitamins & minerals if we want to grow.
Supplements
Supplements are just that, meaning they are used to supplement your diet, not replace it. Don't ever think of it that way.
Hierarchy of supplements:
I developed this hierarchy of supplements based on what I thought were the most important and also by price.
• 1. Proper diet: Without proper diet you are just wasting money on supplements. Start here! Do not think that supplements are going to do it for you alone.
• 2. Multi-vitamin & mineral: It is very important to have all your vitamins & minerals when resistance training. Most of us are lacking in some areas, make it a priority to make this your first supplement.
• 3. Protein powder: It is usually very hard to get all the protein you need from real foods. Powders make it much easier. Also, these powders are absorbed fast by the body making them ideal after workouts or before and after sleep.
• 4. Creatine: This is great for harder workouts. It also makes you muscles hang on to water, giving them a better environment to grow.
• 5. L-glutamine: This is an important amino acid in muscle recovery
• 6. Branch chained amino acid: These are great before and after workouts along with L-glutamine because it gives your muscles all the amino acids it needs to repair and grow.
• 7. ZMA: This helps you release more growth hormone while you sleep, increasing your size and strength.
• 8. Thermogenic: These really help in the fat loss process. They also help you hang on to more muscle while dieting due to the fact you can eat more.
• 9. Meal replacement: Although very expensive, meal replacements make it much more convenient to get some of your meals in. Also, you can get in more meals than if you were to eat only real foods.
"The golden hour"
Remember "The golden hour" because it will make things so much easier for you. "The golden hour" is a window of opportunity we have to get everything we have depleted in our body back in a short amount of time. Think of your muscles as a gas tank: When you workout, you use gas for energy or in this case glucose. After a workout, our muscles are in a unique state. They are able to fill back up very quickly leaving you full for the next workout. If you wait to long, your muscles don't fill back up as easily and the carbs you eat are more likely to be stored as fat. Doing this will also let you take advantage of insulin's muscle building effects from the simple carbs you have ingested. You want to ingest 50-75 grams of simple carbs right after a workout. Also, this is when you want to take your protein shake because it will absorb quickly and supply your muscles with the amino acids that they need.
Insulin
This is a very complicated subject, but all we need to know is that insulin can help us build muscle or can make us fat depending on the timing. Insulin is released by the pancreas in response to elevated blood sugar levels. We can achieve a high blood sugar level by ingesting simple carbs. Like "the golden hour" we have a window of opportunity to take advantage of the muscle building effects of the insulin without getting fat. We have about 4 or 5 hours after we workout to take advantage of insulin. If we take in too many simple carbs out of this window, we are very likely to store fat.
Cheat day
The theory behind the cheat days is you take one day every 2 weeks to eat anything you want and actually get leaner. It might sound crazy, but it worked for me. When you eat low carbs for a time for body begins to think it is not getting all the food it needs (because your not storing any fat) and begins to slow down your metabolism. When you bombard your body with food on that one day, it tricks your body into thinking it has all it needs and speeds your metabolism back up. I can tell you from experience, every day after a cheat day I felt leaner and looked better.
Ketosis
This is when your body uses protein for energy. This happens when we have too few carbs in the body or when we over train. I went into the state of ketosis for only the last week of my 12-week transition for a couple of reasons: (1) I wanted all of my muscles to shrink down so when I carbed back up, my skin would be tighter. (2) When you go into ketosis it seems to bring the water out from under the skin. Don't go into this state to loose fat. Without carbs your body can not burn fat effectively. You will loose weight rather quickly, but only because you don't have as much glycogen in the muscle. Also, you are simply loosing water. Remember that proteins are the building blocks for muscle and that means they are fair game for energy when in the state of ketosis. I would not recommend going into this state unless you are trying to get into a super ripped state for a short amount of time, like for a bodybuilding contest.

Answer 2

1 lb of fat is equal to 3500 calories. So in order to lose 1 lb of fat, you have to burn 3500 calories. An easy way to do this is to either burn 500 calories from exercise, eat 500 less, or a mix of both. Over the course of 1 week, that is 1 lb of fat. However, strictly using the eating 500 less, is not recommended. As soon as you hit your target and eat normal again, it will all slowly come back. Exercise helps you lose and keep off weight and just helps you look better. Using only diet makes you lose fat AND muscle. Working in a addition to eating better is probably the best choice. If you want to lose more, simply up the calorie burn for each day. Do not lose more than 1-2 lbs a week once you start going (the first week migh tbe a little off). If you lose too much each week, it becomes unhealthy for your body and the benefits could be counterproductive.

Answer 3

·The best and healthies diet I will list for you. It is important to maintain a good diet so you don't compromise your health. Damage done because of lack of nutrition is not worth a nice body. Some diet damage cannot be fixed. When you deprive your brain, the brain will take other body cells to convert to the elements that it needs. And the cells it takes are BRAIN cells. OOPS. I don't want to lose brain cells to have thin legs. But I would like to have both.

Also, a quick weight loss is usually a water loss and that loss will come back ASAP. You cannot lose FAT more than 2 to 3 pounds a week. Any more than that and you are loosing water and muscle mass (not good)

AND DON'T GO ON A DIET. DECIDE TO MAKE A LIFE CHANGE TO A HEALTHY LIFE STYLE.

1) fruits and veggies, all you want, organic, raw, vine-ripe if possible. Steamed is OK,sauteed is OK even canned or frozen is OK, but lots of them.
2) limited or no meat.
3) nothing fried
4) no FAST FOOD- is junk, no nutrition, empty calories
5) NO PROCESSED FOOD. if you can't pronounce it don't eat it.
6) nothing white, salt, sugar, mayo, milk, (or at least in moderation.
7) NO DAIRY-dairy is great for baby cows, your body does not even digest it properly. check out www.notmilk.com
8) EXERCISE- and be sure to refresh your body with water and fresh fruit
9) NO PROTEIN SUPPLEMENTS. Muscle is made from water, replace the water. You get enough protein from the food you eat, You get more protein from spinach than the supplements you take and your body does not get toxic on food protein the way it will with supplements. Supplements can really tax you liver. One reason athlets die so young is that their exercise creates so man free radicals in their bodies and they don't take in enough antioxidants to nutralized them.(fruits and veggies- not protein powers)
10) Good supplement would be Omega 3, and B-12 and Juice Plus+
http://www.juiceplus.com/nsa/pages/Home....
11) NO CARBONATED DRINKS, or at least limited. They actually dissolve the calcium in your bones.
12) Calories in calories out.
13) whole grain bread is OK
14) nuts for Omega 3, almonds, walnuts
15) possible supplements, Omega 3 and B-12

AND DON'T GO NUTS, MODERATION.

And the spell check would not work, so if I messed up please forgive.

Answer 4

My wife and I have taken Zylene to lose weight. It is all natural, no ephedra and works! increases energy, decreases cravings and decreases appetite. We both eat very healthy following the south beach diet. We both exercise daily also. You can definately lose weight by may.
http://www.zylenebody.com

Answer 5

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Answer 6

Honestly theres no way but to excercise and eat right give up the sugars and cheese and u should slim up in no time

Answer 7

to eat a healthy diet, and to extercise daily, it pays off!!

Answer 8

*** g93 1/22 pp. 12-14 If I Lost Weight, Anybody Can! ***

If I Lost Weight, Anybody Can!

DO YOU hate your bathroom scale? I did. I remember staring in disgust last year as the dial climbed to yet another new high—nearly 240 pounds [110 kg]. I thought to myself, ‘I weigh more than the world heavyweight boxing champion and more than a lot of professional American football players. This is worse than ridiculous. This is getting dangerous!’

Perhaps you know someone like me—a male office worker in early middle age, physically active in youth but now given to spasmodic exercise between extended bouts of newspaper reading. Blood pressure borderline high, serum cholesterol a “little” high, 50 pounds [20 kg] overweight, still believing that the problem is not that serious.

Well, the problem is serious. People just like me are dying of heart attacks every day—lots of people having heart attacks. I could cite statistics about the dangers of each extra pound, but the problem is not statistics. The problem, to put it bluntly, is widows and orphans. The problem is children, like my two little girls, growing up without their daddy.

Think about it, daddies.

Once I had made up my mind to lose weight, I remembered the excellent information in the May 22, 1989, Awake! series “Is Losing Weight a Losing Battle?”—especially the “Four Ways to Win” the battle of the bulge. The four ways suggested are: (1) the right food, (2) at the right time, (3) in the right amount, (4) with the right exercise.

Those guidelines work! I lost 60 pounds [30 kg] by following them, and you can lose weight too. In the process, I learned a few things that you may find helpful.

Weight Loss Begins Between the Ears

Most of us who are overweight gained our weight slowly, a few pounds a year, often starting in our 30’s. From time to time, we would diet and lose a few pounds, only to gain them back again with interest. When this happened to me, it resulted in a sort of learned helplessness—a feeling that nothing would work, so why try?

The way to break this cycle of learned helplessness is to start your diet, not with your waistline, but between the ears, changing the way you think about food. This may call for some brutal honesty, but without it your diet is probably doomed from the start.

In my case, keeping track of everything I ate and drank for a week was an eye-opener. True, I usually ate lightly at mealtimes, but nonstop snacking in the evening undid whatever good had been accomplished by self-control during the day. When I added up the calories of the cheese, nuts, peanut butter, and cookies that went down the hatch after supper, I was astonished. Worse, those snacks were loaded with fat and sugar. For me no diet was going to work unless the evening snacks were eliminated. Sound familiar?

The next painful realization for me was that I would not lose weight and keep it off unless I eliminated all alcoholic beverages from my diet. Not only is alcohol high in calories and easily turned to fat but a glass of wine in the evening is all it takes to weaken my self-control and my resolve not to snack. A glass of wine is not just a glass of wine. For me, it is also six cookies and a bowl of nuts, so to speak! I discovered that herbal teas could be excellent substitutes. Now, even after reaching my target weight, I drink less alcohol than before.

These honest evaluations convinced me of the value of two firm guidelines during the weight-loss period of my diet.

1. Avoid all snacks in the evening.

2. Avoid all alcoholic beverages.

Know Your Diet-Killers!

The French have a saying, En mangeant, l’appetit vient, which means that the more you eat, the hungrier you get. For many of us, this is literally true. We may not feel hungry when we sit down to our favorite meal, but something snaps within as we start to eat, and suddenly we are famished. So we stuff ourselves until all the food is gone or, after four helpings, our aching tummies finally beg for mercy. What happened?

In my case the problem was bread, especially homemade bread. My long-suffering wife, who makes delicious bread, had to give up baking for a time. A man can stand only so much temptation! For you the problem may be chocolate or something else. The point is, know your enemy. Make a list of the foods that make you hungry when you eat them and avoid those foods. There are plenty of other choices. I found that salads and steamed vegetables taste good and fill me up without triggering that craving for more.

Getting Over the Hump

Yo-yo dieting, losing weight only to gain it back, is a sucker’s game that serves no purpose other than enriching the diet hucksters that flourish in most Western developed countries. Having done my share of yo-yo dieting, I was determined that this time it would be different. But how?

Don’t be ashamed to ask for help. Talk to your doctor. Find people who will praise and reward you each week as those pounds come off. This may be a friend who is also dieting, a family member, or the people at a reputable weight-loss clinic. Teamwork and reinforcement will help get you over the hump—past the point where your weight-loss efforts have broken down before. By this time you will be feeling better, and people will start to compliment you on your appearance. From that point on, the psychological factors work for you instead of against you.

Another key to getting over the hump is to have a diet that is reasonable and does not make you feel starved and deprived. I found that the best dietary advice I could get merely elaborated on the points made in that May 22, 1989, Awake! about the right foods. My weight-loss diet consists of a low-fat cereal or a diet muffin with half a grapefruit for breakfast, a generous salad with low-fat dressing for lunch, and steamed vegetables and lean meats for supper, with no bread or dessert. At 1,200 to 1,500 calories per day, the diet is strict but hardly Draconian. An apple makes a handy mid-day snack, and for those rare occasions when hunger pangs cannot be shooed away, I always use one of my secret weapons, a wonderful dieter’s secret you too should know.

Secret Weapons

What is that secret? It is a substance that is good for you, fills you up almost instantly, contains no calories whatsoever, and is cheap! Water. It is amazing what six to eight glasses of water daily will do to help you make a success of your diet. Once your body learns that a glass of water is your determined response to stomach pangs, they begin to fade away. Water, more than anything else, helped me overcome my lifelong habit of evening snacks.

Another secret weapon for long-term weight control is regular exercise. Of course, everyone has heard that exercise helps in weight loss, so what is the secret? In this case the secret is the tremendous psychological boost you get from feeling better and looking better. That reward more than makes up for the lack of certain foods. It helps to keep you going, not even feeling envious when everyone around you is eating chocolate mousse and you are eating frozen grapes.

Diet and exercise complement each other perfectly. Losing weight does not mean that you have to look sick. Regular exercise will keep a glow on your features and will tone up your muscles. In fact, improved definition in my muscles gave the illusion to others that I was losing weight faster than I really was! I found that I needed a combination of sports that I could enjoy with someone else, like tennis, and exercises that I could do alone at any time, such as weight lifting. Just as the exercise made the diet appear more effective, the diet made the exercise appear more effective by uncovering muscles that had been buried beneath ten years of flab. As my weight went from 240 pounds [110 kg] to 180 [80 kg], I found myself looking forward to going through my paces with some healthy local teenagers to see if they could keep up!

If you have been overweight for as long as I was, you may have got used to feeling weighed down and worn out every morning when getting up, dragging around all day, and dozing off in the easy chair at night. Carrying 50 or 60 extra pounds [20 or 30 kg] is like going through life with a ball and chain! I literally did not remember how it felt to bounce out of bed in the morning feeling eager to get up, having energy to spare all day long. Now I know.

The War That Never Ends

Reaching your target weight is like winning a protracted battle. But while that first battle may be over, the real war has just begun. Those of us who are middle-aged and have sedentary jobs will always have to watch what we eat if we are to keep off the weight we struggled to lose. The trick is to think of your diet as a lifetime project. It may be modified for weight maintenance instead of weight loss, but it is never really over. If you return to your old eating habits, your weight will return to you.

Upon reaching your target weight, why not celebrate by getting some new clothes? Then consider getting rid of the old clothes. Keeping those old, baggy clothes just in case is like planning for failure. Wear clothes that are not too loose, and they will quickly alert you if unwanted inches begin to return. While your maintenance diet will have more variety than your weight-loss diet, be sure that you make a permanent, lifetime change to low-fat, low-sugar foods. Don’t give up on your regular exercise either. That is a key to feeling good.