General weight loss question??

while flicking through a couple of the questions in the diet and fitness section so may answers to weight loss questions say "to loose weights you must burn off more calories than you eat" Surely thats not a safe and realisistic way to loose weight??!! Am i wrong?! Surely your body needs a certain amount of calories - post workout to keep your body working? please corret me if im wrong though.. i am just looking for the right answer!

Public Comments

  1. Yes your body does need a certain amount of calories to function but if you go below this amount your body will get its energy by burning of fat or other tissue (weight loss).
  2. to loose weights you must burn off more calories than you eat. this is a true statement! Yes your body does need a certain amount calories to properly function. When you eat less than you "need" -your body is forced to get the calories out of your stored fat- and thus you loose weight! The only way this is dangerous is if you put your body into starvation mode and feed if dramaticly less than what you are excersising.
  3. just eat sensibly, exercise regularly and stay positive, thats the best advice!
  4. I think most people gain weight cause they have had a period of being lazy, true or not? With some routine of being more active then they previously have been and with watching what they eat they will shed off some pounds. Eventually their body will hit a plateau and they will have to change that routine. I don't think it has anything with counting calories as long as they're careful of what they are eating. When people do extreme dieting it is hard to keep up and eventually they will stop trying all together.
  5. A lot of people eat far too many calories and it's these that need to burn off. If you eat 10000 calories a day and only use 1000 then the rest will turn to fat. I think that's what you're looking for. Any diet that loses you 17lb in 9 days is not healthy. Stick to eating a good diet and getting enough exercise. It's good to eat wholegrain foods like a good breakfast cereal and wholemeal bread, these will help you feel full and help the digestion as well as providing vital vitamins and minerals. Eat plenty fruit and veg too but don't be afraid to treat yourself now and then or you'll get bored and give up. Remember to drink plenty water too. Good luck
  6. You can find out how many calories you need by using bmr (basil metalic rate). It takes a deficit of 3500 calories to loose 1 pound. The best way to do this is burn off 500 calories and eat 500 calories a day less. Just make sure you are eating at least the amount of calories that are in your bmr. I know this is accurate because I see a nutritionist 3 times a week. If you dont want to count calories another thing you can do is eat 2 1/2 servings of protein, 4 veggies, 3 fruits, 3 starches, 1 dairy and 1 fat. This is a great way to loose weight.
  7. You should eat at least 10X your body weight. So, if you weigh 160, be sure to eat at least 1600 calories...that's just to meet your basic metabolic needs. If you exercise, you can eat more. The best way to lose fat is through weight training not aerobics/cardio. Cardio is good for heart health but can stop your weight loss, especially for women. Cardio destroys muscle mass and you want muscle mass! More muscle burns more fat. The Abs Diet by David Zinczenko, editor of Men's Health magazine, is a no nonsense way to lose fat. It could have been called the Best Body Diet or the Thigh Diet, lol. It's about eating clean foods and doing a full body workout every other day. There is a home workout plan using two sets of dumbbells. If you don't have weights, here is what you can do 3 days a week without weights: 3 sets of pushups for the arms and chest - 20 each (modify if you have to) 3 sets of squats - 20 each 3 sets of lunges on each leg - 20 each Crunches - 3 sets of 20 Calf raises - feet forward always, 3 sets - 20 each leg Eventually up the sets and reps. However, it would be good to invest in some dumbbells and do higher weights, lower reps. Crunches you can increase to 100's, literally. Cutting calories by much usually backfires. You need to cut a little and be patient - that's the key. By a little, I mean like 100 - 200 a day - a smaller portion of potatoes, cut out a muffin you don't need, chips, rarely eat french fries, that kind of thing. When I weight train, the fat falls off. I have tried some crazy diets but who wants to live like that? You can do a search on the internet for "clean foods." You can also search bodybuilding forms to find the correct form for doing the above exercises. Or you could go to the bookstore and browse through bodybuilding books - they are usually in the exercise section and near the alternative/beauty books. If there is a sport or activity you like, that would be great...Karate burns 600-900 calories an hour, rollerblading burns tons. The only safe way to lose bodyfat is to cut calories just a little and exercise, or exercise a lot and maybe even increase calories.
  8. No that is truly the only safe way to loose weight. A calorie is just a way to measure energy we use in our body. You body needs a certain amount to function while just being awake and perfoming normal body functions. Alot of times people eat too many calories and they get stored (fat). We are not asking you to starve yourself but to watch what you eat and exercise. This will enable your body to function and loose fat to attain your goals.
  9. I listen to what people say, but my own experience is what determines what I do. You can lose weight by a) drinking less fluid than you expend from exertion b) sitting in a sauna for a long time c) weighing yourself at a different time of day than usual You can gain weight by a) blocking your intestines with heavy breads and carbohydrates b) weighing yourself at a different time of day than usual c) disturbing your normal digestion process with alcoholic binges In the long run, muscle is heavier than fat. So if you lose fat, and gain muscle, you may put weight on but in fact be losing fat. Intense excercise routines put muscle on, as well as shedding fat. The right answer, I suspect, is the one which suits you the best. The one which your body accepts, and the one which your mind accepts. Ultimately, if you consume more calories than you burn off, you will store the remainder as fat. This does not necessarily mean that you wll gain weight over a short period of time.
  10. You're right; it's a myth. (But one with a lot of momentum. Many people who should be qualified enough to know better, still believe the Calorie Theory, against clear evidence.) Stored bodyfat ('triglyceride') can't be burned to provide energy. You need enough available fat in circulation to allow you to do fatburning (effortless) activity, in order to stimulate the conversion ('deglyceration') of stored fats into a useful form, and their release into the bloodstream. If you reduce the amount of fuel circulating in your bloodstream (either by using a lot of it very fast, or by not eating enough), you'll feel hungry and weak. Your body will try to store as much circulating fat as possible, and the 'appestat' (hypothalamus) in your brain will cause cravings for sweet & fatty foods. It's not just a feeling. As you fatigue, your coordination and judgement will deteriorate (your brain neds fuel, as well as your body), and you will remain vulnerable to mistakes and accidents after your fatiguing workout has ended. If you restrict your dietary intake enough, ordinary daily activities can affect you in the same way, by using up more 'calories' (energy) than you can spare. The 'spaced', 'clarity', or 'zooming' feeling you get when your brain is constantly starved of energy, is something that some slimmers start to enjoy, and it becomes a motivation for more and more extreme dieting. Weight itself is a very poor indicator of whether you have more bodyfat than you need, and a worse indicator of any beneficial changes in your body composition.
  11. you are absolutely right. i think most people think of something bad when they hear the word calorie. its all about energy and therefore not always a bad thing,for example a slice of wholemeal bread has roughly the same amount of calories then 7g of butter however the energie from the bread is from carbs, but from butter the energy comes from fat and is therefore not so healthy. actually there are 4 components in food that are capable of producing energy,carbs,protein and fat and alcohol and i think everbody knows which ones are not so good
  12. Without wishing to seem impolite Type ' weight loss ' into the search for questions box and you will see the answers to the 20 questions like yours that clutter ' Answers ' every day, together with their standard answers. Type in ‘Answers swamped with weight loss questions!?’ to see what regular contributors think. I will cut and paste my stock answer, however it is interesting to see how close this is ( I have been using it for over 2 months), to a recent paper from University of California. They did a meta-analysis of all the work on weight loss over the past few years. ( summary) It showed that 2/3 of people who diet yo-yo to a higher weight, none of the faddy diets of diet pills work and that rapid weight loss doubles heart attack risk! They seemed to suggest the only hope was modest calorie reduction + EXERCISE. This is a news report of the article: http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/health/... I have to admit I have a 'stock' answer for this question, since if you look it appears 20-30 times every day!!! Type 'guaranteed weight loss' into google, you will find 1 1/2 million sites! Look around you if ANY of these things worked would we be getting so overweight? We are what we eat, but we are at least as much what we don't do. Calorie intakes in 1900 and 1950 were higher than they are now, we just don't use them up! Eat a balanced diet with plenty of fruit and veg. Take a healthy amount of exercise 30-40 minutes of vigorous exercise per day 4-5 days a week. I hate to think what percentage of the UK population does that 2%? 5%? I have seen hundreds of questions with this same pattern :- I am fat, tell me where on line I can get this super diet or herbal/dangerous/illegal drug that I hear will fix it for me in 10 minutes without the need for me to get off the couch! No fixes pal , less in more out, its the only way.
  13. Hi there. In the past I have lost four stone.. All by just really working hard at the gym, not so much using gym equipment though, but by doing classes, ie: body combat, Spin cycle and body pump, usually about 7 classes per week. It wasn't easy to begin with but eventually I was addicted. The weight stayed off me for two years but within the last year I've put on nearly two stone...... This I know is because my life changed big style and I didn't get to the gym as much, Missing months at a time. I however and back at it again and struggling. I'm going to keep at it though as back then when I was giving it my all I ate loads.... and even ate really badly at the weekends. So basically my advice would be is to try and start exercising about five days per week and you'll see big changes. Good Luck xx
Powered by Yahoo! Answers