Visit a nearby newsstand and I am sure that you will come across some magazines promoting miraculous weight-loss formulas. Sometimes they turn to the mythic properties of fruit, like with the “Lemon Diet” or with the “Papaya Diet.” Other times they just create special nutritional plans, say the “Low-Carb Diet.” There are also the magic workouts and exercises that are supposed to reduce your belly circumference by 10 centimeters in three days – while toning your muscles….
Come on!
The reality is that there are no shortcuts or easy ways to get in good shape. Sorry, but someone needed to tell you this.
Now, don’t get me wrong, you won’t not need to starve for days or perform some Spartan training activities. As long as you get conscious about what you are doing, you will see the results. Below you will find the four principles that you need to keep in mind in your weight-loss journey.
1. Forget About Diets
People that go from diet to diet never reach a stable weight, let alone a good shape. The reason is quite simple: diets are, by their very nature, temporary. You can’t expect to eat properly for two or three weeks and fix your weight problems for the rest of the year.
I know it is encouraging to read that you could lose 20 pounds in 2 weeks if you were to eat this and that. It is encouraging but not true. They might even work in the short term, but after a couple of months you will recover what you have lost.
Many of these diets are not even targeted at fat loss. They promise that you will lose weight, but the caloric cut is so drastic that you end up losing many pounds of water and muscle mass along the way, and that is not what you should be aiming for.
If diets are not the solution, what is then? Proper nutrition, and we’ll cover this on the next principle.
2. Proper Nutrition
If you want to keep your weight and fat percentage under control, you will need to learn the basics of nutrition. Once you learn them, you will be able to eat healthy throughout the year.
Buy a nutrition book on some library and read it. At the very minimum you want to know how your body works, what sources of energy it uses, what are the roles of proteins, carbohydrates, fats, minerals and vitamins.
You will need to shift your paradigm about food. Many people, especially those with weight problems, tend to see food as a source of pleasure. They eat what they like, when they want to, and in whatever proportions it might take to satiate them.
This is not the correct approach. You should see food first and foremost as something functional. You will eat because food is the fuel for your body. If you adopt this mentality, you will start eating what you need, when you need, and in the correct amount.
It might sound extreme, but even with this approach you will be able to have pleasure while eating. It is just a matter of getting used to it. Once you detox yourself from the junk food you will see that an apple can be just as tasty as a sugar-jammed apple pie.
Needless to say that if you are trying to lose weight you will need to have a caloric deficit in place. That is, you will need to eat less calories than what your body needs to keep his weight. Ideally you want to jot down some numbers and calculate how much you should be eating. There are plenty of resources online that can help you here.
3. Physical Exercise
Eating healthy and having a caloric deficit will only take you half the way. The other key factor is physical exercise.
Low intensity cardio is the corner stone of any weight loss program. That is because the higher the intensity of the exercise, the lower the amount of free fat acids in your bloodstream (free fat acids come from your stored fat through the lipolysis process, and they are burned for energy).
So far so good, but what is considered low intensity cardio? The easiest way to determine is to find your max heart rate (220 – age = max heart rate) and calculate 40% and 60% of it. That is the range you should aim for when doing low intensity cardio. Suppose you are 20 years old. This means that your max heart rate is around 200, so your range for low intensity cardio is from 80 heart beats per minute to 120 heart beats per minute.
Pragmatically speaking, what activities can you do as low intensity cardio? There are many of them, from walking to swimming and riding a bicycle; just find something that you like to do.
Start with two weekly sessions, and build your way up. The same theory goes for the duration, find what you are capable of doing in the beginning (without feeling too tired), and build your way up. It might be 10, 20 or 30 minutes, it doesn’t matter as long as you make progress along the way.
4. Discipline and Perseverance
You can start eating healthy and exercising properly, but unless you stick doing it regularly, the results won’t appear (if they do, they won’t last).
Discipline and perseverance are key here.
You could find a friend to exercise together, a mentor to guide you throughout the way, or even write down your progress day after day, like this person has done on his fat man weight loss blog. Do whatever it takes to stay on track.
That is pretty much all you need.
It won’t be easy, but very few worth things in life are easy to achieve, right?
Good luck!
Tags: Weight Loss
This misses the one most important factor of loosing weight. Changing your appetite. Consider foods addiciting, just like tobacco. Your desire for the next dose is caused by the previous. Get off all animal products (milk, poultry, fish, pork, beef) anything with processed sugar (soda, cakes, etc.), fat oils (vegtable, olive, etc.), coffee .. consider each food one at a time. Do you need to eat it or not? Eat grains (rice, barley, etc.), beans, vegtables and fruit. Eat all you want although be careful with the fruit. In three weeks most of the addiction will be out of your body and you’ll have started dropping down to your correct weight. Your body knows what it needs and witt call for it. Just don’t over fuel it with artificially high calorie density. Some people call this vegan. I call it PR awareness. There is great profit in selling addiction, processing and long shelf life. It pays for one large amount of spin. Defiy it.
p.s. I lost 35 lbs doing this two years later there is no sign of it coming back.
Hi-
Can you recommend some smart books on nutrition?
Thanks.
Weight Loss = Eat Less + Move More
Take in 3,500 calories above what you burn, you will gain a pound. Take in 3,500 calories less then what you burn, you will lose a pound.
Seriously…how complicated do we have to make it?
FOUR WORDS : GASTRIC BYPASS.
I like it, it is not rocket science, but with the obesity levels in America, it is certainly not easy.
article reprinted
This could also be referred to as common sense.
I disagree with most of these. I would revise them as follows:
1. All diets are valid and all will help you lose weight IF you eat less calories than your body needs. It doesn’t matter if it’s Weight Watchers or Atkins or vegan or cabbage soup! As long as you eat less than your body burns each day, less than your basal metabolic weight (BMR), you will lose weight. BMR can be calculated here: http://www.caloriesperhour.com/index_burn.php.
2. We don’t know what makes us healthy, so any diet advice around nutrition should be viewed with much skepticism. Just about every nurition study available has another study to contradict it. The truth is that we don’t know what makes us healthy and most of what we think we know about nutrition is likely bogus or overly generalized. Most people who try to eat “nutritiously” revert to their formal eating habits, so any nutrition-focused approach is likely to fail. Nutrition-focused dieting should NOT be followed. Your body is an omnivorous machine. You can use just about any mix of carbs, fats, and proteins. Eat what you want, just eat less than your body needs if you want to lose weight.
3. Exercise does not help people lose weight, although it could help them maintain weight loss. Most people who turn to exericise for weight loss when they’re not naturally inclined to it will fail, so while exercise might be recommended, it is not essential to dieting. The essential point is caloric deficency, or eating less than your body needs. Can you eat more if you burn more by exercising? Yes! And guess what: that’s exactly what you will do, gaining almost nothing from exercise.
4. Discipline and perserverence: both will cause people to quit. Instead, people need to learn how to respond to the adversities of dieting: how to eat on schedule, how to eat slowly, how to recover from failure, how to differentiate between hunger and cravings, knowing that hunger pains last 2 minutes, not 20, etc. The Beck Diet, which is a psychological approach to dieting, does this. I highly recommended it. It’s not one of those diets that chirp the usual nutrition, exercise, perserverence nonsense. These diets always fail. Beck helps you understand why you fail and how to self-correct.
Eat less than your body needs until you lose the weight you need to loss, then eat as much as your body needs to maintain it. Eat whatever you want. The get Beck to help you master self-defeating psychological behaviors.
Lol fat.
The problem is, is that no one wants to here their fat because they don’t know what is healthy and do not exercise. In my personal, not professional, opinion we should cut off health care to Obese people until they modify their lifestyles. They put an unfair, and unecessary burden on our medical system. Let them die from their own vices
Sorry let me clarify, people do not want to hear they are fat because they don’t know what is healthy and do not exericise, and because once they learn this, they do nothing to change
I couldn’t agree more. I will try this out and report progress in my blog
I disagree when you say:
—
People that go from diet to diet never reach a stable weight, let alone a good shape. The reason is quite simple: diets are, by their very nature, temporary. You can’t expect to eat properly for two or three weeks and fix your weight problems for the rest of the year.
They might even work in the short term, but after a couple of months you will recover what you have lost.
—
Diet is a general word and not a synonym of weight loss…diet is an eating habit with a certainly goal. (Maintenance, weight loss, health, blood pressure, lowering cholesterol, etc…)
Take for example the Mediterranean diet…it’s not a weight loss diet. It’s a lifetime healthy living diet.
I can agree with what you say if you’d wrote “Weight loss diet”.
Yes tip n°1 is right for fad diets like Low carbs, Atkins, South Beach and so on…
Other wise great article especially for the n°4 tip. I think it’s the basis of healthy living.
Finally, someone who isn’t trying to blame it on other things. Fact of the matter is, people today eat too much shit. There is literally a fast food join every half mile around where I live. That coupled with the fact no one bothers exercising any more.
ah, this didnt tell me much. eat healthy, work out, wait for results.
These statements really sound like they’re coming from someone who has never had a weight problem. I have had weight and food issues all of my life, and these comments just sound like the same stupid record playing over and over again.
I have lost significant amounts of weight in my life in only two ways:
1. Low caloric intake and LOTS (2-3 hours per day) of exercise (this definitely works, but it also kinda sucks for the obvious reasons).
2. Low carbohydrate intake, with normal/moderate exercise. And everyone I know (I realize this is anecdotal, but I’ve got a link to scientific evidence below) who has changed to this type of eating has had outrageously good results.
So your advice here (to fat people [I can say that, since I'm fat], who really like to eat) is to “find a book on nutrition” (NOTE: there are THOUSANDS, many written by snake oil salesmen) to change WHAT you eat, and also change the AMOUNT you eat. Let me tell you, that advice SUCKS.
Here is the most recent article about low carb diets that I’ve read: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F04E2D61F3EF934A35754C0A9649C8B63
From a Fatty’s perspective (that’s what *I* like to call myself), this is a MUCH better approach, with MUCH better results. Now all I’ve got to do is restrict what I eat to one group that I already love (I can eat just about all the meat you put in front of me). I don’t have to change my psychology of eating very much at all: if I’m sad, I can binge to my heart’s content on protein and fat, AND THAT’S OK. I know that I’ll lose weight and get healthier over time.
Sorry about the rant. I have no affiliation with the NYT or anyone they interviewed. I just think this kind of post took absolutely no research, and that you’re really uninformed about the thoughts and feelings of the people who would be reading your blog.
Your statement “Low intensity cardio is the corner stone of any weight loss program”, represents decade old thinking. While it is true that the lower intensity your activity the higher percentage of calories from fat are burned. There is much more to the picture than this. You actual burn a higher percentage of calories from fat just sitting around then you do running, but you are not recommending just sitting on your ass to burn fat. What really ends up mattering is how many total calories you burn during and after the workout. Most people will have much more success in fat loss and fitness with high intensity work done at short intervals.
There are two main factors that are involved with people being overweight. One, people spend too much time sitting around. Everyone just needs to be more active in something. It may not be jogging, but find something to do for a few hours each day that involve moving around. If you are not sure what to do, find an amateur sport you like, and train for that.
Two, people each too much processed food. 90% of what you can buy at a grocery store people have no business eating. There is no reason for an adult with moderate activity levels to eat anything made from flour, or with high amounts of sugar in it. All you need to eat is fruit, vegetables, and meat.
Frank is full of it. I’ve lost 150 pounds (went from ~400 to ~250 currently, hoping to get to 220ish) and NOT by a fad diet, but by following these 4 steps. They’re presented here a little simplistically but basically this is what you need.
Psychology and eating habits are the #1 facet of healthy, permanent weight loss, by far.
I wish it were so simple! Of the four principles, only the first and the last have any value at all. The 2nd and 3rd are completely wrong! While nutrition is important, as is exercise, most current books on nutrition and/or exercise are completely useless and even harmful. For instance “low-intensity” cardio has been proven to actually cause weight gain in most people! Low-intensity cardio exercise done longer than about 15 minutes causes the body to start burning fat for energy, which in turn causes the body to “learn” to create more fat so that it will be available for energy the next time it is subjected to low-intensity cardio exercise. This type of exercise also has the deadly characteristic of actually reducing the overall capability of the cardio-vascular system to respond to the need for higher heart-rates and respiration and may significantly endanger anyone who exercises regularly this way. In addition, it has been proven countless times that any scheme to lose weight based on calorie restriction will only work on the short term. Our bodies, when experiencing too few calories for our needs, shift into survival mode which means it will store a much higher portion of those calories as fat. Muscle tissue is consumed for energy, and any weight loss experienced will be very detrimental to the health of the individual!
The last poster said that the writer is “really uniformed about the
thoughts and feelings of the people who would be reading your blog. So as well as writing a blog the author must also be able to read the minds and somehow determine the feelings of everyone who will read his blog in case he upsets them. Give me a break!
If this was even remotely possible, which it isn’t, nothing would ever get blogged on the net as there will always be some over
sensitive individual who will take everything written as a personal
afront to their feelings. The above article is sensible common sense advice. Take it or leave it but don’t whine about it.
You are so right about the diet mentality. This country is so focused on the quick fix, it’s ridiculous.
I would also add that to be successful in losing weight, you need to be able to visualize yourself in that thinner body. Always begin with the end in mind.
Well, I lost 8 pounds in two months just by going to the gym and exercising, not eating after 7pm, didn’t change my diet, I ate almost everything including sweets and even McDonald’s food (well, once a month hamburger and small fries just to indulge myself). Because I injured myself, had to stop going to the gym and I gained back a pound or two but the shape I gained during those two months, stayed. So, regular exercise is almost everything one needs to do… It worked for me… But it’s a good article, if I didn’t know any better or anything else, I would follow the instructions. They’re logical.
I didn’t of which you have written but i now this Sometimes people follow extreme weight loss tips because they think that it’ll help them lose more weight. But does it really? Many people have heard about all types of extreme weight loss tips that are supposed to help them lose weight.
It is very important to eat a well balanced meal and get some physical activity in to your daily routine.
I’ve lost 56 pounds in the past 11 months by doing the following:
1. Cut out *most* fast food, except for rare occasions
2. Eat the “diet stuff” during the week.
3. Cut out most soda, and when I do drink it, it’s diet.
4. Eat anything I want on the weekends(this was key for maintaining my willpower.. over time “what you want” becomes less dramatic. I tend to eat a junky lunch on the weekends and a very small dinner. Anything more and I don’t feel well.
5. Close monitoring of my weight with a digital scale. If I did something that made my weight go down at all, I stuck with it. If I did something that made it go up, I tried something else. Seeing even a few tenths of a pound of difference can inspire you to stick with it.
6. I walk about 3 miles 2 or 3 times a week.
So.. that’s my deal. I’m in no way a fitness expert and I don’t know if it’s gonna work for everyone.. but it’s certainly worth a shot right? I went from 240 to (currently) 184 and still going. At one point I was wearing a size 44 jeans.. today my size 34’s are getting a little too loose.
Your comments and suggestions about dieting, nutrtion and exercise are so important in the weight loss journey. Good, healthy nutrition and moving our bodies is absolutely essentail and “Diets” don’t work. The only part I hesitate on is the words discipline and perserverance. These words are pretty negative and I believe that this idea that we have to be strictly disciplined and controlled forever is what often keeps us from success. Instead of approaching it from the hard, discipline angle why not look at it as easy and natural. Eating well and exercising are what are bodies most want. It can be easy and natural to do this if we allow it to be so. It really doesn’t have to be about struggle. Committment yes, but not struggle.
here here Frank! I’m so tired of hearing from thin people who have never struggled with weight issues that I wouldn’t be fat if only I weren’t so lazy and wasn’t a glutton. I work full time, go to college full time, and have a teenager and a husband who require constant care-so for someone to accuse me of being lazy, or not having enough “perseverance” really stings. I also don’t eat hordes of food, I’ve cut out fast food altogether, drink diet sodas, cut out sweets, etc. I’M STILL FAT. What this article doesn’t address is how someone is supposed to deal with their hunger or their appetite, since exercising AND eating less is bound to produce ravenous hunger. So how do we fatties deal with that huh?
very interesting, but I don’t agree with you
Idetrorce
Frank, you stated above with a low carb diet, you can eat all the meat and fat you want, and still lose weight. Although this is true, you are not eating heart healthy, and will ultimatly be less healthy.
Good eating habits and exercise is the only way to lose weight.
This doesnt tells much, but is right! The three main steps to get rid of your weight are “eat healthy, work out, wait for results”
Well all I know if you use the proper proteins and creatines can reach your goals!
If overweight people can become sensible with their lifestyle they would not need fad diets. Instant weight loss diets are for people who are fat and cannot balance with calorie consuming and calorie burning.
This is so true!!!!!!
Well that was pretty basic. Well written but I think much more could be added. First off….to point number 1 “forget diet” we’re all on a diet. Diet: is what you ingest on a daily basis, now whether it’s considered a weight conscience diet is another matter.
Let’s simplify even more….calories in versus calories burned equal our weight! If you ate 4 big macs a day and 4 large fries that would be what about 4,000 calories. Now, if you did 5 hours of cardio and burned 4,000 calories you wouldnt gain any weight. So, what you eat is not as important as how much you eat. Now, im by no means reccomending the consumption of 4 big macs a day but just trying to make a point. Calories in versus calories burned “kiss” keep it stupid simp
good luck
While trying to lose belly fat it is important that you have a positive attitude.
I also think that changing your diet is more important for healthy weight loss then exercise, but combining them is ideal of course
I disagree with some people that say that exercising doesn’t work! Believe me it does, also I agree with the low calorie intake, and I also agree that an apple will be much sweeter and much more delicious than any apple pie thing, this is true! I started working out last year around November, I’ll admit, not every day, as I should’ve, and I lost 20lbs alone in 3 months, just by saying good bye to the fatty foods. Then in early Feb.’08 I started exercising every day for about 1 1/2, not only did I start feeling great, but I also started seeing results, not right away, but after every month, WOW, I started noticing the difference. it’s pretty amazing! ^_^ In total I lost (I was pretty plump, pleasantly plump I say ^_^ 5′5 200lbs) 65lbs, and I feel great and I feel good about myself for a change. And FYI it is better to have a friend or family member’s motivation, I didn’t, but if I had, it would’ve been much, much easier and much more fun!!! Another thing too, I wanted to reach a certain weight goal by a certain time and if I didn’t meet my expectations, I would get discouraged and felt like giving up, so instead I would buy jeans that were a size too small and I felt motivated and wanted to fit into them by a certain time and THAT’S HOW I DID IT! Oh and I see all of your point of views, everyone loses weight differently and with different methods. OH AND ONE MORE THING!!! I’m 21, but when I was 17 the ATKINS Diet was “IN” and I damaged my body with it, I lost a lot of weight, but I also lost a lot of nutrition as well, I went all the way from 170 to 130 in no time, I got really sick and had to pay a heavy price for my carelessness so I agree with the “fad” diets, they never work, and look I gained double the weight O_o, but thank God I decided to start working out and eating right and just like that started seeing results, and NOW I FEEL GREAT, it’s the only way to go, and most importantly the HEALTHY way to do so as well! Well good luck to everyone, YOU CAN DO IT! ^_^
~Mrs.Jove
Knowledge is one key to dieting (and it has to be your knowledge rather than a hope provided by a so called “secret of dieting”). Having a certain knowledge will promotes the next step which is that you take control using that aquired knowledge as your guide. So what knowledge am I referring to ? Do you know what weight you shoud be ?, do you know what % fat and body mass index you are now, and what you should be ?, do you know what rate of weight loss is sustainable ?. Thats a start anyway – and may already have stumped a few people already. Dont think you are different from others with regards having an unlucky tendancy to put on weight – you can actually prove to yourself whether this is the case or not using a bit more knowledge. Being overweight means what you are doing isnt balanced ( your body is given more than it needs, and your metabolism tends to account for this by storing excess as fat and being less efficient as availablity of food is not “sensed” an issue). The basic principles of what your body requires has been conclusively measured and published in phenomenal levels of detail. Someone above raised a great point about thinking about it as “fuel” rather than pleasure (a hard mindset to change if you enjoy food as I do, but nevertheless true). It also doesnt take long on the internet to find the info you need on “calorific daily requirement”, “body mass index” and you can actually calculate (free) all these elements for your own physique and establish where you stand currently, and more importantly where you should be and how long it should take you to get to that healthy weight. Foods are now sold with packaging covered with calorific breakdown, and recommended daily allowances. I found it a pain to look at these and count up the %’s – but dont worry as there are plenty of free websites to help you e.g. fitday, dailyplate etc., where you just enter the food online and it adds up your daily amounts and you can start the all important habit of tracking progress on a daily basis (you can also enter activities to see how much calories burnt during that day). It soon becomes an education piece in that you start not to need the website, but you know what is too much and what works for you. Like anything it wont be easy to begin with as your changing a well-established pattern of eating that probably fits with either a hectic lifestyle, demanding kids, no time for yourself etc. However, being aware of where you are and where your goal lies, and then being able to track your progress and see yourself actually start to achieve weight loss becomes….. addictive!. It may sound bizzare to get addicted to this element, but some people find the thrill of finding a process that makes them loose weight, actually up their efforts and they start loosing weight too fast (i.e. >2 lbs per week), I know personally as I did it to start with, and my body started to think that food was scarce and it compensated by slowing the weight loss through a number of tricks it has learnt over a few million years of evolution to cope with situations where real food scarcity was a problem. This is where people often give up with the words”I am eating hardly anything but I’ve stopped loosing weight” – normally followed by a depressed bite into the nearest high calorific thing to hand. There are going to be problems along the way, but with the internet being the best source of information humans have ever had at their fingertips, you can normally find yourself a suggestion or answer to your problems. Dont give up, get online and look into the problem – you will normally find the answers (if you end up spending money or giving away personal information then its not an answer – its money making or marketing). I needed to change what I was doing and keep on track, and found some key answers. I have no affiliation with anything to do with making money from weight loss, I am just another person who has tried a number of diets in the past with some success only to hammer the weight back on afterwards, and now realise that the problem was the fact I hadnt changed my understanding one little bit. The process that I and many here describe does work, but it needs a certain frame of mind to keep the goal in focus. Hope this makes sense for someone starting out or even in the middle of trying to loose weight.