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I Want To Lose Weight, Where Do I Start?
If you’re really ready to lose weight, then there are several ways you can go about it. You can go about it on your own and just regulate your diet and exercise or you can choose from any number of popular diets. It’s really up to you how to proceed. Below, I’ve included some ways that you can get your weight loss off to a good start and I’ve also listed some popular diets that you can learn more about (if you decide to go that route).
What You Should Do First
When you want to lose weight, and you’re REALLY serious about it, you’ll need to do a few things first. First and foremost you’ll need to start regulating your diet. This is crucial if you want to reach your goals.
Weight loss is essentially just losing or burning off more calories per day than you consume. It’s a pretty simple concept but it’s not so simple to implement. You can try and keep track of the calories you consume and burn off each day. Diets like Jenny Craig, Nutrisystem, and Weight Watchers are perfect for this type of thing. If you’re not interested or don’t have the time (or patience) to learn portioning, then these diets will show you how it’s done (both Jenny Craig and Nutrisystem will deliver meals directly to your home).
You must, MUST eliminate processed foods. Any foods that you buy at a drive-through is going to be detrimental to your weight loss goals (and your health). Stay away from fast-food, candy, donuts, cookies, cakes, pies, chips, etc. With junk food you pretty much have to use your head—if you think it’s bad for you, it probably is.
You should also eliminate sugary drinks and fatty and salty snacks. This means no soda and no chips. Even those these foods are good, they are going to ruin any chance you have of losing weight if you continue to consume them.
The foods you DO want to eat are probably the foods that you really don’t want to eat. Foods like vegetables, fruits, lean meats, fish, whole-grains, and nuts are perfect foods to help you lose weight. I recommend that if you don’t know how to cook, that you learn how. You can find so many cookbooks that feature delicious, low calorie foods that you can make yourself. You can find cookbooks filled with low-cal foods to fit any taste type. If you’re busy with your career or the kids you can find cookbooks that have lots of great recipes you can cook that will take you less than 30 minutes. Just go to Amazon.com and do a search for low calorie cookbooks or weight loss cookbooks and you’ll find a whole bunch of them. One quick tip for using Amazon: Always read the reviews left by others who have bought the book before you. If it’s a terrible cookbook you’ll find out from the reviews instead of wasting your money.
Again, if you don’t want to make your own food and you have the money you can try diets like Jenny Craig or Nutrisystem. You can simply jump online, pick the foods you want, and they will ship them to you. It’s simple and easy but it is a bit pricey.
What You Need To Do Secondly
Most people hate this word but it’s something that you really need to not only to lose weight but also to age gracefully…
…that word is EXERCISE!
A lot of people don’t like exercise because they think it means joining a gym and spending an hour staring at the wall while you run on a treadmill. This doesn’t have to be the case. You can do lots of physical activites that you can actually enjoy. Try running, tennis, basketball, walking, swimming, bicycling, dancing, martial arts, jumping rope, or exercise videos at home. There are so many options for you to choose from. Join your local YMCA or health club and find out what kind of yoga, Pilates, spinning, Zumba, or other aerobic classes that they have available. You can also learn how to burn calories fast at home so you don’t have to spend time or money on a gym membership.
Ideally when you first start out you want to try and get around 30 minutes of cardiovascular exercise 3 or 4 times a week. Once you get used to it you can ramp it up to 60 minutes a day, 5 to 6 days per week. I like to break mine up: Monday I’ll run, Tuesday I’ll go for a long walk, Wednesday I’ll play basketball with my kids, Thursday I’ll do Yoga at home, and Friday I’ll swim some laps. Vary it up and have fun with it. You don’t even have to do the same things week to week.
Your Weight Loss Goals
When you are just starting out losing weight try and set your goal at around 100 calories per day. Then when you become more accustomed to your new diet and exercise routine you can ramp it up to 500 calories per day. If you lose/burn off 500 calories per day then you will lose around 1 to 2 pounds of fat per week.
How To Lose Weight
