Eat To Lose

You want to lose weight, be it just a few vanity pounds or over 30 plus pounds or anything in between, but are not sure where to begin.  Maybe you hear some anecdotal advice that if you do this or do that or eat this one thing, the pounds will just drop off.  You are bombarded by constantly by ads for green coffee beans, magic dust, raspberry ketones, acai berry, exercise machines that target specific areas, shoes or other clothing and a thousand more things that will make your head spin around in confusion.

The truth is, none of it works.  You might get some results from these gimmicks but once you stop using it, what is lost will come back.

The best way to lose and keep it off is with a balanced NUTRITIOUS diet and exercise. What that means is 4-6 oz of lean protein, vegetables, salad and a small bit of carbs; if you just have to have them.  Exercise does not mean turning into a gym rat or running marathons every week.  Exercise can be as simple as walking , gardening or any activity that gets the heart rate up above a sitting on your ass level.

Some people like to count calories, which is great but remember to find out what your minimum calorie intake should be to lose weight is and make sure that is the number you end on everyday.  If you exercise or workout, you want to replenish what you burn to help maintain the goal of getting towards that minimum intake goal.  Example would be if you have to consume 2000 calories a day to lose weight and you go to the gym and burn 800 calories, you should consume a total of 2800 calories to offset that the 800 that was burned up in exercise.  The reason this should be done, is that if you fall to far under your minimum, your body can enter starvation mode.  This is when your body converts the food that you eat into fat and will use lean muscle as fuel as it is easier to convert that into energy rather than trying to convert the fat stores into energy.  You could lose pounds during this time but will be losing muscle mass instead of fat; this is why a balanced nutritious diet is important.

You have to eat to lose weight.  That does seem very counter intuitive but it is the truth.  You think that eating got me fat and so not eating will make me skinny.  Think about this, would you rather be skinny and sickly or skinny and healthy?