Sunday, February 04, 2007

Tips for Losing Weight Fast - Burn the Fat or Eat the Muscle?

By D.G. Gordon

This article is called ‘tips for losing weight fast’ because I would like to draw your attention to some points about a couple of weight-loss concepts that you may not know.

The first point is that losing weight fast can be done. Many have done it, particularly on low-carb diets like Atkins where ketosis (when your body converts fats to energy) is involved. Losing weight fast can also occur by engaging in near-starvation techniques.

The problem with such ‘losing weight fast’ techniques is that most of the weight you’re losing is muscle. This is particularly bad in the long run because greater muscle means a faster metabolism, which allows you to burn more calories while at rest. Losing weight fast without sacrificing muscle is simply not realistic.

The ketosis stage of low-carb diets appeals mightily to the ‘losing weight fast’ mentality, but has also been described as the greatest weight-loss marketing tool. This is because when you engage in it for a couple of weeks you may find yourself losing weight fast during that time, which allows you to think that you are participating in some kind of miracle diet. Despite the fact that you can’t sustain these kinds of losses, this initial weight loss stimulates positive word-of-mouth. Note as well that ketosis is only a single phase of a low-carb diet because if you engage in it for too long it can lead to serious kidney and liver damage – a considerable sacrifice to make in trying to lose weight fast when you can have sustainable weight loss and a healthy body instead.

So, the first distinction to be made is between weight loss and fat loss. If you starve yourself for a few weeks, the number on the scale will probably make you happy. What the scale is not telling you is that you are losing a great deal of muscle, which is a really bad situation for you if you seek the long-term weight loss that has to do with burning fat – and keeping it off.

What I offer to you in this article is not a recommendation to starve yourself or engage in ketosis, even though if you followed this advice you would think well of me for a couple of weeks when you got on the scale (before cursing me intensely later on when you gained it all back).

What I do offer is some tips on healthy methods you can use to lose as much fat weight as possible in as short a time as possible. Losing weight fast does little good if it’s not fat, and this is an important distinction. Losing weight for healthy fat loss means a maximum of a few pounds per week, while setting up habits that will allow you to continue to lose rather than short-term ecstasy followed by another bout of frustration and depression.

If you’re willing to commit to it, here are some tips concerning what you can do to look and feel markedly better in the next couple of months:

Whip your calorie-burning mechanism.

This means speed up your metabolism, and the best way to do that is to get your body accustomed to burning calories quickly by feeding it frequently. You will get great results with 6 small meals a day, and if you decide – for example - that you are going to take in 1800 calories a day, then you’re looking at small portions of 300 calories each meal. Note that you should not be taking in less than 1200 calories per day since you increase your risk of depleting muscle as you get lower in this range.

Don’t just eat frequently, eat well.

Obviously, if you need to lose weight quickly you know that you need to limit your amount of fat intake, particularly the saturated fats found in foods like ice cream, cookies, chocolate and fatty parts of the cow and the pig (steak, hamburgers, bacon, ham, etc). You will want to replace them with lean proteins (fish, chicken, turkey, etc), complex carbohydrates (whole grain bread, oatmeal, potatoes, green vegetables) and unsaturated fats (fish, avocados, nuts). Your carbohydrates should comprise about 50% of your diet, proteins should be around 30%, and fats should be 20% or less.

Sweat it out.

Aerobic exercise (meaning that which maintains an elevated heart rate) is crucial to fat loss, and if you need to lose the fat faster then you will need to do it more often than average. This means 6 or even 7 days of the week, for 45 minutes or so each day. The best aerobic exercises include cycling (without stopping), jogging, or using equipment like an elliptical machine, a stairclimber, a rowing machine, or a cross-country ski machine.

Burn more calories while sleeping.

The way to do this is to build more muscle, so you’re going to want to do some weight training. Doing workouts 3 or 4 days a week, 30 minutes each day will increase your lean body mass and charge your metabolism even further. This means more calories burned and more fat loss, particularly in the long term.

If you think that this sounds like too much work, I urge you to ignore these tips and try the low-carb/starvation alternatives mentioned above. You presumably won’t be too surprised when you join the millions who have adopted the ‘losing weight fast’ mindset and temporarily lightened the burden on their scales, only to return shortly to the exact place they started at.

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What methods do they use to change their lives and make themselves confident and healthy beyond their wildest dreams?

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3 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

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