By
Timea Fejer
I spent two years losing over 140 pounds the old fashioned way: proper diet and exercise. No fads. No pills. No surgery. No crazy machines. I was 30 years old and 340 pounds. With a history of heart disease and obesity in my family, I decided it was time to shed the pounds.
Almost every day I get people I haven't seen in years coming up to me saying "Wow! You look great!" and then the next question... "What have you been doing?" That's why I wrote this article.
Disclaimer
Now, of course, as a general disclaimer, I have to say that the tips I'm sharing with you here are just from my own personal experience. I'm not a professional health expert - although over the past couple of years I've read dozens of books, and hundreds of articles on nutrition, exercise, and weight lifting. I'm not a doctor. You should, of course, seek your own doctor's advice before starting any kind of a weight-loss or exercise plan. I firmly believe that with the right diet and proper exercise, almost anyone should be able to lose weight and get fit safely.
A calorie is a unit of heat energy. Specifically, it's the amount of heat energy required to raise 1 gram of water by 1 degree Celsius. How this relates to your body is that when you eat food, the food molecules are broken down chemically and that energy is either used by your body to perform work (like building muscle, or constructing new cells) or is stored (as fat). If you take in more calories than you burn, you will start to get fat.
Now, in the world of calories, it takes 3500 calories to equal one pound of body weight. So, if you take in an extra 3500 calories in your diet this week without exercising, congratulations... you've just gained one pound (probably all body fat). The good news is that you can lose one pound of fat by either removing 3500 calories from your diet, or adding 3500 calories of exercise to your weekly schedule, or a combination of the two.
What's 3500 calories? It's actually not much if you're eating the wrong kinds of food. You can consume 3500 calories in one meal if you eat two Double Whoppers (1010 calories each), a King Size order of french fries (590), a King Size onion rings (600), and a chocolate shake (440). Don't laugh... this is what I used to eat for dinner if my family went to Burger King... or something similarly outrageous.
So the bottom line here is that if you want to lose weight, you have to create a calorie deficit. That means you have to burn off more calories than you eat. You had to eat more calories than you burned to get fat... now you have to reduce the calories to get lean. It's that simple. In order to know how many calories you're taking in and burning off, you need to write them down.
You need to stoke your fire often to keep it burning. Keep your metabolism running all day long by eating every 3 to 4 hours. My personal tip: I eat on hours evenly divisible by 3. That means breakfast at 9am (if I'm up that early), lunch at noon, a snack at 3pm, dinner at 6pm, a snack at 9pm, and if I'm still up another snack at midnight.
Now, I personally work late (I usually get most of my "real work" done between the hours of 10pm and 2am) but if you need to eat at different hours, that's fine... Just take the total number of calories you're going to eat throughout the day and divvy them up into 3-hour intervals. Keep that fire stoked! If you can't take a break at work to eat every 3 hours, bring a protein bar with you.
If you skip breakfast, then you're extremely hungry by the time lunch comes around. Skip lunch, and you're more likely to gorge yourself at dinner. Why? Your body is saying, "Hey! I need food badly!" If you feed yourself often, throughout the day, your body doesn't go into shock, and you won't get those wild cravings and hunger pangs when it's time to eat.
I cannot stress how important it is to write everything down that you eat. All you need is a little notebook. Make four columns: what you ate, how much of it you ate, how many calories were in it, and what time of the day you ate it. It's that simple. Also write down any exercise or other activities that are more strenuous than just sitting around.
Taking the time to recognize what you're eating is the first step to losing weight. A lot of people truly don't realize how much crap they're eating. When I first started doing this - and writing down everything I was eating - it really opened my eyes to the volumes of junk food I was eating before. I was a slave to cookies, chocolate, chicken wings, and pizza. When I first took the time to look up the fact that a chicken wing has 150 calories in it (yes, one wing), I was astounded. I used to eat 20 wings and 2 or 3 slices of pizza for dinner.
Now you can get yourself one of those little calorie counter booklets from your favorite book store. Sometimes you'll even see them in the grocery store. They're invaluable. Once you get to know the foods you eat on a regular basis, keeping track of what you eat is really quite simple. You will gain a better appreciation for what you're putting in your body.
So please, please, please, take my advice and journal everything you eat. You do NOT have to do this for the rest of your life... just until you hit your goal weight. By that time, you'll be able to keep a good mental track of what you're eating, and you'll be more aware of what you should eat, and how much exercise you should be getting every week.
Also, you do not have to obsess over every little calorie! Counting your calories can be as detailed as you like. If you want to track every last celery stick, by all means do so. However, you can just round your calories off to the nearest 10, or 20. Don't worry whether or not something contains 24 or 26 calories. In the end, it doesn't make that much of a difference... but whether something has 100 or 200 calories does.
The important thing... and I cannot stress this enough... is write everything down!
Now here's what happens: your body isn't getting any food first thing in the morning, so your metabolism isn't getting started. Your "calorie-burning fire" doesn't get started in the morning, so you're not really burning as many calories as you should be. Also, your body is saying, "uh, oh - I'm not getting any food. I better hold on to whatever body fat I can because we're starving!" This is bad. If you don't eat enough food, often enough, your body will basically go into starvation mode and hang on to whatever body fat it can.
The key to unlocking your stored fat is to feed yourself enough good food so that your body doesn't need to store any additional fat, while at the same time getting plenty of exercise and strength training to burn whatever fat you currently have and build muscle.
There are a bunch of factors that go into calculating metabolic rates and all that jazz, but you can use this chart as a basic measurement of how many calories you should be eating as part of your weight-loss diet. Notice it's based on your current weight and your gender. Women need fewer calories then do men. Also, if you're a smaller person, you need less energy than a larger person. Use this chart to determine how many calories you should be eating on a daily basis.
130-150: 1200 Calories
151-200: 1400 Calories
201-250: 1600 Calories
251-300: 1800 Calories
301-350: 2000 Calories
351-400: 2200 Calories
130-150: 1400 Calories
151-200: 1600 Calories
201-250: 1800 Calories
251-300: 2000 Calories
301-350: 2200 Calories
351-400: 2400 Calories
Now here's something that's vitally important... you want to make sure you get enough calories every day, otherwise your body will go into "starvation" mode. You want to make sure that you eat your meals at least four times a day to keep your metabolism running. If you don't eat, your body will go into starvation mode. It will realize that it's not getting enough food, and will hold on to body fat. It's important to get enough calories spaced throughout the day to keep your fire stoked. Don't think that by starving yourself you're going to lose weight. It will be the wrong kind of weight. Remember, your body will eat it's own muscle tissue first before burning fat if it doesn't have enough protein.
You will do this for exactly two weeks... no more... no less. Then, you will go back to eating the normal amount of calories as indicated on the chart above.
It's not going to be easy. You won't be able to eat any junk food for these first two weeks. You can, however, eat plenty of good foods - chicken, salads, whole grain breads, etc. It won't be easy, but once you get through it, you'll be able to add lots of calories back in to your diet, and feel more normal again... in fact, after eating only 1000 calories for two weeks, you'll probably have a hard time bringing yourself back up to 2000 calories (or whatever you should be at).
Here's why this works: dropping your calorie intake down to 1000 calories will shock your body into new eating habits. You will cleanse your body of toxins (like those monster grease burgers you've been eating) and get some good, healthy food in you. You will notice weight loss after the first couple of days, but you'll be keeping your energy up by eating good foods at regular intervals. You can stop any cravings you're having with water, or add some extra veggies in there - you can eat just about as much green vegetables as you want.
Tip 6. Don't Think "Fat Free" Means "Calorie Free"
Everywhere you look, it seems that "low fat" foods abound. While there are certain low-fat or no-fat foods that we are going to eat, you don't want to restrict yourself to a totally no-fat diet. There are certain fats that are good fats, and other that are bad fats. We're going to want to eat good fats because they are necessary for proper health. Bad fats, however, will make you fat.
There are tons of fad "no-fat" diets out there that have promoted the whole "low-fat" mentality. What's happened? People are still continuing to get fat eating "fat-free" foods. They eat fat-free cookies, fat-free chips, and fat-free dairy products, yet they keep getting fatter. Why? Many fat-free foods have nearly as many calories as their full-fat versions.
Now, you start eating "fat free" potato chips thinking to yourself that you can splurge... hey, why not? They're "fat free." Well, you still load on the calories with fat-free potato chips. It's the calories that make you fat. In fact, when food manufacturers remove fat from their products, often times they replace the fat with sugar to improve the taste. Guess what... by adding sugar, they're bringing the calorie count almost back up to where the full-fat product was.
We need fat. Fat forms lining of the cell membranes in almost every cell of our bodies. Your brain is composed primarily of fat. If you don't eat enough of the right kinds of fat, your brain will not get the proper nutrition to function. Eating too little fat can also reduce your testosterone levels (equally important for women as for men).
Article Source:
http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Richard_Rost
I spent two years losing over 140 pounds the old fashioned way: proper diet and exercise. No fads. No pills. No surgery. No crazy machines. I was 30 years old and 340 pounds. With a history of heart disease and obesity in my family, I decided it was time to shed the pounds.
Almost every day I get people I haven't seen in years coming up to me saying "Wow! You look great!" and then the next question... "What have you been doing?" That's why I wrote this article.
Disclaimer
Now, of course, as a general disclaimer, I have to say that the tips I'm sharing with you here are just from my own personal experience. I'm not a professional health expert - although over the past couple of years I've read dozens of books, and hundreds of articles on nutrition, exercise, and weight lifting. I'm not a doctor. You should, of course, seek your own doctor's advice before starting any kind of a weight-loss or exercise plan. I firmly believe that with the right diet and proper exercise, almost anyone should be able to lose weight and get fit safely.
Tip 1. It's All About Calories
First, the bad
news. Weight gain and loss is directly tied to the amount of calories
you eat versus the calories you expend through exercise. What's a
calorie?A calorie is a unit of heat energy. Specifically, it's the amount of heat energy required to raise 1 gram of water by 1 degree Celsius. How this relates to your body is that when you eat food, the food molecules are broken down chemically and that energy is either used by your body to perform work (like building muscle, or constructing new cells) or is stored (as fat). If you take in more calories than you burn, you will start to get fat.
Now, in the world of calories, it takes 3500 calories to equal one pound of body weight. So, if you take in an extra 3500 calories in your diet this week without exercising, congratulations... you've just gained one pound (probably all body fat). The good news is that you can lose one pound of fat by either removing 3500 calories from your diet, or adding 3500 calories of exercise to your weekly schedule, or a combination of the two.
What's 3500 calories? It's actually not much if you're eating the wrong kinds of food. You can consume 3500 calories in one meal if you eat two Double Whoppers (1010 calories each), a King Size order of french fries (590), a King Size onion rings (600), and a chocolate shake (440). Don't laugh... this is what I used to eat for dinner if my family went to Burger King... or something similarly outrageous.
So the bottom line here is that if you want to lose weight, you have to create a calorie deficit. That means you have to burn off more calories than you eat. You had to eat more calories than you burned to get fat... now you have to reduce the calories to get lean. It's that simple. In order to know how many calories you're taking in and burning off, you need to write them down.
Tip 2. Eat Frequently Throughout the Day
Think
of your body as a furnace. You want your furnace to burn fuel as
efficiently as possible. In order for that to happen, you need to let it
burn hot and steady throughout the day.You need to stoke your fire often to keep it burning. Keep your metabolism running all day long by eating every 3 to 4 hours. My personal tip: I eat on hours evenly divisible by 3. That means breakfast at 9am (if I'm up that early), lunch at noon, a snack at 3pm, dinner at 6pm, a snack at 9pm, and if I'm still up another snack at midnight.
Now, I personally work late (I usually get most of my "real work" done between the hours of 10pm and 2am) but if you need to eat at different hours, that's fine... Just take the total number of calories you're going to eat throughout the day and divvy them up into 3-hour intervals. Keep that fire stoked! If you can't take a break at work to eat every 3 hours, bring a protein bar with you.
If you skip breakfast, then you're extremely hungry by the time lunch comes around. Skip lunch, and you're more likely to gorge yourself at dinner. Why? Your body is saying, "Hey! I need food badly!" If you feed yourself often, throughout the day, your body doesn't go into shock, and you won't get those wild cravings and hunger pangs when it's time to eat.
Tip 3. Start a Food & Exercise Journal
Don't
just dismiss this section. I did! The first couple of times I read
about doing this in fitness and weight-loss books, I said to myself, "I
don't have the time to do this." But you know what - it really works!I cannot stress how important it is to write everything down that you eat. All you need is a little notebook. Make four columns: what you ate, how much of it you ate, how many calories were in it, and what time of the day you ate it. It's that simple. Also write down any exercise or other activities that are more strenuous than just sitting around.
Taking the time to recognize what you're eating is the first step to losing weight. A lot of people truly don't realize how much crap they're eating. When I first started doing this - and writing down everything I was eating - it really opened my eyes to the volumes of junk food I was eating before. I was a slave to cookies, chocolate, chicken wings, and pizza. When I first took the time to look up the fact that a chicken wing has 150 calories in it (yes, one wing), I was astounded. I used to eat 20 wings and 2 or 3 slices of pizza for dinner.
Now you can get yourself one of those little calorie counter booklets from your favorite book store. Sometimes you'll even see them in the grocery store. They're invaluable. Once you get to know the foods you eat on a regular basis, keeping track of what you eat is really quite simple. You will gain a better appreciation for what you're putting in your body.
So please, please, please, take my advice and journal everything you eat. You do NOT have to do this for the rest of your life... just until you hit your goal weight. By that time, you'll be able to keep a good mental track of what you're eating, and you'll be more aware of what you should eat, and how much exercise you should be getting every week.
Also, you do not have to obsess over every little calorie! Counting your calories can be as detailed as you like. If you want to track every last celery stick, by all means do so. However, you can just round your calories off to the nearest 10, or 20. Don't worry whether or not something contains 24 or 26 calories. In the end, it doesn't make that much of a difference... but whether something has 100 or 200 calories does.
The important thing... and I cannot stress this enough... is write everything down!
Tip 4. Eat The Right Amount of Calories
We're
not going to starve ourselves! In fact, proper weight loss is best
accomplished by eating more frequently than you're probably used to! Let
me say that again: you're going to eat more food than you are right
now. You're going to eat better food, more often, but at a lower calorie
intake. If you're like I used to be, you're probably skipping
breakfast. This means that when lunchtime comes around, you're starving,
so you probably overeat the wrong kinds of food (like pizza, wings,
Chinese, etc.) for lunch - and I'll bet it's fast food or takeout. Then,
you don't eat anything again for six to eight hours, and pack in a
monster dinner.Now here's what happens: your body isn't getting any food first thing in the morning, so your metabolism isn't getting started. Your "calorie-burning fire" doesn't get started in the morning, so you're not really burning as many calories as you should be. Also, your body is saying, "uh, oh - I'm not getting any food. I better hold on to whatever body fat I can because we're starving!" This is bad. If you don't eat enough food, often enough, your body will basically go into starvation mode and hang on to whatever body fat it can.
The key to unlocking your stored fat is to feed yourself enough good food so that your body doesn't need to store any additional fat, while at the same time getting plenty of exercise and strength training to burn whatever fat you currently have and build muscle.
There are a bunch of factors that go into calculating metabolic rates and all that jazz, but you can use this chart as a basic measurement of how many calories you should be eating as part of your weight-loss diet. Notice it's based on your current weight and your gender. Women need fewer calories then do men. Also, if you're a smaller person, you need less energy than a larger person. Use this chart to determine how many calories you should be eating on a daily basis.
WOMEN
Under 130: 1000 Calories130-150: 1200 Calories
151-200: 1400 Calories
201-250: 1600 Calories
251-300: 1800 Calories
301-350: 2000 Calories
351-400: 2200 Calories
MEN
Under 130: 1200 Calories130-150: 1400 Calories
151-200: 1600 Calories
201-250: 1800 Calories
251-300: 2000 Calories
301-350: 2200 Calories
351-400: 2400 Calories
Now here's something that's vitally important... you want to make sure you get enough calories every day, otherwise your body will go into "starvation" mode. You want to make sure that you eat your meals at least four times a day to keep your metabolism running. If you don't eat, your body will go into starvation mode. It will realize that it's not getting enough food, and will hold on to body fat. It's important to get enough calories spaced throughout the day to keep your fire stoked. Don't think that by starving yourself you're going to lose weight. It will be the wrong kind of weight. Remember, your body will eat it's own muscle tissue first before burning fat if it doesn't have enough protein.
Tip 5. Send Yourself to Boot Camp
Now, if
you want to jump start your body on its way to fast weight loss, here's
what you're going to do. Ignore the charts above, and drop yourself
right down to a 1000-calorie-per-day diet immediately. In addition, make
sure you get at least 15 minutes of walking (or some other easy, basic,
extra exercise) in every day as well.You will do this for exactly two weeks... no more... no less. Then, you will go back to eating the normal amount of calories as indicated on the chart above.
It's not going to be easy. You won't be able to eat any junk food for these first two weeks. You can, however, eat plenty of good foods - chicken, salads, whole grain breads, etc. It won't be easy, but once you get through it, you'll be able to add lots of calories back in to your diet, and feel more normal again... in fact, after eating only 1000 calories for two weeks, you'll probably have a hard time bringing yourself back up to 2000 calories (or whatever you should be at).
Here's why this works: dropping your calorie intake down to 1000 calories will shock your body into new eating habits. You will cleanse your body of toxins (like those monster grease burgers you've been eating) and get some good, healthy food in you. You will notice weight loss after the first couple of days, but you'll be keeping your energy up by eating good foods at regular intervals. You can stop any cravings you're having with water, or add some extra veggies in there - you can eat just about as much green vegetables as you want.
Tip 6. Don't Think "Fat Free" Means "Calorie Free"
Everywhere you look, it seems that "low fat" foods abound. While there are certain low-fat or no-fat foods that we are going to eat, you don't want to restrict yourself to a totally no-fat diet. There are certain fats that are good fats, and other that are bad fats. We're going to want to eat good fats because they are necessary for proper health. Bad fats, however, will make you fat.
There are tons of fad "no-fat" diets out there that have promoted the whole "low-fat" mentality. What's happened? People are still continuing to get fat eating "fat-free" foods. They eat fat-free cookies, fat-free chips, and fat-free dairy products, yet they keep getting fatter. Why? Many fat-free foods have nearly as many calories as their full-fat versions.
Now, you start eating "fat free" potato chips thinking to yourself that you can splurge... hey, why not? They're "fat free." Well, you still load on the calories with fat-free potato chips. It's the calories that make you fat. In fact, when food manufacturers remove fat from their products, often times they replace the fat with sugar to improve the taste. Guess what... by adding sugar, they're bringing the calorie count almost back up to where the full-fat product was.
We need fat. Fat forms lining of the cell membranes in almost every cell of our bodies. Your brain is composed primarily of fat. If you don't eat enough of the right kinds of fat, your brain will not get the proper nutrition to function. Eating too little fat can also reduce your testosterone levels (equally important for women as for men).
thanks for sharing
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