Losing Weight Right!

Yesterday I was browsing a certain social network on the internet when I noticed a posting mentioning a mathematical equation concerning weight loss. I didn’t click the link to read what they wrote at the time, but I ran over it in my mind continually as the day went on and I drew up my own formula:

Today’s Weight + Today’s Calories – (Today’s Calories + 3500 Calories) = 1 Pound Fat Lost

Now, observe first that I said fat lost and not weight lost. You can lose weight without burning fat, but you can’t burn fat without losing weight. We all studied digestion in school. The body takes what it wants and gets rid of the rest. Fat is the real enemy that is our problem. So let’s discuss eliminating fat, not weight.

Consider calories. Our body uses a certain number of calories each day just to live. We’ll call that number 2200. Some need more, some need less. So in this case we have to ingest at least 2200 calories each day just to maintain our body fat or weight. But if we burn more calories than we consume, say 2700, we will lose weight (this is pretty obvious, right?). A pound of fat is equal to 3500 calories, so when we have burned 3500 more calories than we’ve ingested, we will lose a pound of fat! If we burn only 500 extra calories in a day, we have lost a pound of fat in a week!

Basically, there are only three requirements for consuming these extra calories:

1. Eat healthy, nutritious foods.
2. Be careful of your portions.
3. Stay active!

If you do each of these things on a consistent basis, you ought to lose weight… but wait! What if I can’t be consistent in this ? What if I succumb to the temptation of that apple pie that my taste buds are craving? Well, be aware that you are going to “mess up” sometimes. If you deny yourself the “fun foods” completely, you will almost certainly give up and overdo it, the dam will be broken, and you are likely to gain back the fat!

There are many “diets” out there claiming to be the best. I like to point out that most people who “diet,” consider their program only temporary. For that reason they always regain the weight. If you look up the word diet in the dictionary, you’ll find it originally meant a “lifestyle.” So we should to think of our new program as a way of life, so we don’t want to concentrate on eating primarily protein, for instance, for the rest of our life. That isn’t a realistic way to live, so we need to adopt a healthy new lifestyle, reducing our portions, eating healthier foods, and leading more active lives.

Being active can mean walking more, or it can mean running, or aerobics. These have been general recommendations for years, but we discount them because we don’t believe they offer enough. Or maybe we are too lazy. Do you dine out? Split a meal with your spouse. Do you television? Put a treadmill in front of it. These are things you can adopt to raise your activity level. If you really want to lose fat, however, you should concentrate on resistance training and building muscle. Why? Because more nuscle means higher metabolism and more fat-burning. Remember our goal? Burning fat! The best way to build muscle is not to lift weights over and over five days a week, but rather to work out intensely one day, then take a couple days off before doing it again. This gives your muscles time to recuperate and then they can take the intensity again. You should be active every day, but give the muscles you are building some time to rest. Use those days to do the other things, the aerobic exercises, walking, climbing stairs, etc.

So there are some thoughts to consider. But don’t just consider them! Get off the couch! Get some exercise, Eat the right foods! Burn fat and get fit!

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This entry was posted on Saturday, February 13th, 2010 at 1:31 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.