Eating More to Lose Weight ?

How to Lose Weight Effectively

No need to starve yourself to lose weight.  In fact, you will have more difficulty losing weight and keeping it off by not eating.  The reason is that your body will go into survival mode, storing fat if there is a lack of food.  As well, your body will start turning muscle protein into the energy. It needs energy to feed your brain, nervous system and red blood cells.  The best way to lose weight is to tone your body and build muscle. Muscle tissue burns 70% of the fat in your body; so losing muscle sacrifices your ability to burn body fat.

Eat to Lose Weight

If you go on a crash diet and starve yourself, you will feel fatigued and you will not have the energy to build muscle.  Again, a lack of eating will lead to less muscle and more stored body fat. Aerobic exercise rebuilds your muscle and teaches it to burn more fat. Eating right gives you the nutrients you need to make that muscle.” Essentially you need to eat to lose weight. 

Depending on your goals and current level of fitness, there is a general rule of thumb for the amount of nutritional energy your body requires.  If you want to maintain your current weight, simply multiply your weight by 15 and this will give you the number of calories needed

Figure Out How Much to Eat and Workout

If you want to lose weight, multiply your weight by 10, so if you weigh 130 pounds your minimal energy requirement is 1300 calories. Then you need to factor in your minimum energy requirements for activity.  If you are an active person you, someone who exercises 3 hours or more per week, you need to multiply your energy requirement by 1.5. 

If you are less active, someone who exercises 1 to 3 hours per week, you need to multiply your minimum energy requirement by 1.2.  This will give you the amount needed to sustain your level of activity without losing muscle.

Now, it’s important to realize that if you want to burn fat you currently have, you don’t want to eat more of it.  The fat in your diet is either burned by your muscle or it is stored in your fact cells. So you want to eat less fat and burn the fat in your body.  To eat less fat, multiply your energy requirement by 0.3 and divide by nine. This will give you your maximum fat intake.

To lose weight effectively, it is suggested that you eat 6 small meals throughout the day, and get at least 20 minutes of exercise.  Make healthier choices when eating – but do eat!  The secret is feeding the muscles and building muscle tone to burn the fat.

5 Short Term Reasons To Get In Shape

So you may be tired of hearing about all the health reasons why you need to lose that tummy flab or drop a pant size by next month, but there are also some less banal reasons for losing weight.  Although the health benefits of getting in shape are many and have been listed ad nauseam, there are also some less commonly cited reasons for getting fit.

Though losing weight can decrease our risk of heart disease, increase our lifespan and help us avoid chronic and acute disease of all sorts, these types of reasons for getting in shape can sometimes be less than motivational.  Although these reasons are obviously very important, they also tend to focus on rather long term effects.  Most people, however, like it or not, tend to think in the short term.  As such, below are some of the best short term motivational reasons to start hitting the gym today. 

1.Improved Mood: 

Just by exercising for thirty minutes today you will dramatically improve your mood and outlook on life.  The immediate effects of serotonin coursing through your body make working out a wonder drug in and of itself.

2.Stress Relief: 

As a correlate to an improved mood and better outlook, you will also relieve pent up stress with just one workout.  By going for a long run or by doing thirty minutes of strength training you will help your body and mind let go of stress.  Working out has been proven to reduce and prevent stress and relieve anxiety.

3.Energy Enhancer: 

Although it may seem counterintuitive to think that pumping iron will actually give you energy, this is nevertheless the case.  Working out regularly will increase your energy levels.  By upping your exercise you will feel stronger and have more stamina making getting everything else that needs to be done in your life easier.

4.Fat Burning: 

Ok, so while one workout won’t necessarily get you down a pant size by tomorrow, it will begin the process of weight loss immediately.  You can lose ounces from your body with only one workout too so although you may not be able to see the results immediately on the scale, you will have burned up to five hundred calories, bringing you one step closer to budging that scale. 

5.Metabolic Boosting: 

Just one workout gets your metabolism revved.  What this means is that your body will continue to burn more calories post workout than it otherwise would.  As your metabolism keeps functioning at a higher level the calories you consume will be burned faster than had you not worked out.  Right away you’ll be burning fat and you’ll be doing so long after the workout has ended!

There are many reasons to lose weight and get in shape. Sometimes it takes short term thinking in order to get us motivated. Stop putting it off and get started today!