There is no quick fix to getting rid of your extra flab–but there are changes you can make to get the ball rolling now and start off in the right direction towards making weight loss feel effortless, make yourself feel better and burn some fat and lose some belly fat along the way. Here’s how to do it, without starving yourself.
Calories Count
The idea of “calories” is frightening to many people who struggle with their weight, but a lot of that is simply due to a bad reputation. Calories are not culprits, they’re simply a measure of energy and one that we need daily to keep ourselves healthy and functioning. Eating takes in calories and exercising uses them up–most people know that. But truly, getting rid of calories isn’t nearly as difficult as most people think. If you’re an average male, right now while you’re reading this off your computer screen, you’re burning about 80 calories; about 60 if you’re the average female and about -10 per bite if you’re eating something while reading this. Just kidding. Well, sort of. The point is that more strenuous activity just makes the process more efficient, by burning more calories, faster. Eating will always bring in calories. Which is why…
Food Counts Too
The trouble comes when we consume more calories than we can expend–more calories than we actually need. The type of food you eat comes into play here. Calorie rich foods take longer to burn off than low calorie foods. If you eat more calories than you can burn off, your body will store them as fat and you will gain weight. This doesn’t mean that you have to give up taste for a lifetime of crudites, but you should eat less healthy foods in moderation. The key is a good balance between your caloric consumption and your level of physical activity.
Exercise Counts Two Fold
We can see then that burning off calories is important to keep you healthy because it gets rid of any excess energy you might have consumed throughout the day. The best exercise regimen is one that meets your needs, allows you burn a decent number of calories and works with your lifestyle. Not everyone is suited to spend hours at the gym, and the good news is not everyone should. There are a variety of activities that are enjoyable and good for getting your blood pumping. Swimming, belly dancing, cycling, hiking and almost any sport you can think of will do the trick just fine. Choosing something you like is worth more than a gym membership if it is something that you will be motivated to pursue and commit to. Who says exercise has to feel like work?
Remember also that the amount of calories you burn add up. You might think that two hundred calories a day is not much of an expenditure, but if you’re sticking with it, over the course of a week you’ve burned fourteen hundred calories! Even if you’ve only exercised three times a week, that’s still six hundred calories–a whole meal’s worth. If you’re trying to lose fat, you’ve taken a crucial first step by getting moving, in whatever way moves you. For best results, you need to combine your physical exertion with a dietary caloric deficit. That is the safest, quickest way to shed pounds while staying healthy.
A Word About Dieting
Our culture in particular gives the word “diet” a bad rap. While the connotations can be bothersome, we should remember in our weight loss endeavors that a diet is merely a food plan. Anything can be in a diet. Cheeseburgers can be part of a diet (although a pure cheeseburger diet is not recommended). With that in mind, we can move along to creating a suitable food plan. What will yours include? A good place to start is to figure out your BMI and from there look up how many calories are needed to maintain the weight you’re currently at.From there, you can figure out how much less you need to consume to get to your ideal weight. How many calories are needed to maintain a weight ten pounds lighter than you are now? Twenty pounds lighter?
How to Approach Losing the Weight
The rest of your game plan can fall into place from calculating your ideal weight’s caloric needs (but please take into consideration your body’s natural structure–we’re not all meant to be a size two!). If need to be eating five hundred calories less a day than you currently do in order to reach that goal you have three options of getting there.
It’s much less of a shock to your system if you burn off 250 with exercise and reduce your calorie intake by 250. That’s like cutting out a single snack. Within a week on this system, you’ll have saved and burned 3,500 calories, the energy equivalent of a 1lb. That’s a loss of a pound a week. It’s steady, but the results will be stable. You’d lose about 30 pounds in 30 weeks–and not worry about gaining it back. The key is to keep it balanced.
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