How Can I Lose Weight Quickly

09 February 2009 | Weight Loss Tips

First thing that you need to do if you are going to be successful at losing weight is to work out your motivation. This may be that you want to lose weight because you have just booked a summer holiday, or are recently single and want to look better, maybe because you have health issues that will be solved by losing a few pounds. As soon as you align your motivation with your weight loss goals you will have taken a big step toward achieving your goals.

Once you have your weight loss goal and your motivation right, you want to follow a plan that is going to see maximum results for minimum effort. Here’s how you do that.

Diet

You don’t have to starve yourself, but you do need to understand your metabolism. The average male needs 2,500 calories per day to survive, the average women needs 2,000 calories per day. So work out if you think you are average, under average or over average, and that will give you an idea of how many calories you should be eating each day. What we need to do is eat just 500 calories less each day than is needed. Combininig that with a good exercise program will result in losing weight quickly.

Food Proportions

As well as considering how many calories you consume, you also need to think about what proportions of your calories come from the three major food sources: fats, carbohydrates and protein. Most people get fat because they eat too much carbohydrate and fats, and not enough protein.

A good healthy diet should be roughly equal parts fats, carbs and proteins. They all have a calorific value, so be sure to count how many calories you consume in fats, carbs and proteins. As a rule of thumb, if you are exercising and trying to lose weight, you should be consuming at least 1 gram of protein for every kilogram of your weight, any less and you will actually burn off your muscles which has a negative effect on your metabolism.

Exercise

Depending on if you already live an active life, you will need to consider upping your exercise levels if you want to lose weight.

If you already walk to work, you will already be getting some cardiovascular exercise each day, so you may only need to do a small amount of extra, high intensity cardio work each week. You could supplement this by doing some weight training, which will help to tone your body.

If you are currently not getting any exercise, I would recommend you start doing some cardiovascular exercise three times a week. This could be jogging, cycling, swimming, squash, tennis, football etc. If you go jogging, you should try and do some high intensity interval training at least once a week, and some steady, stamina building runs for the other runs that you do.

In addition to cardio work, I would recommend you do some weight training each week to stimulate the metabolism and help tone up your muscles.

Measure Your Success

The only way you will be able to keep yourself motivated is if you measure your progress. So, before you do any exercise, measure your vital statistics, like waist, chest, thighs, arms, neck, and also take some photos. At least every month, but maybe every fortnight, repeat this process, so that you may track your progress and see the results improve over time. This will help to keep your motivation up and stop you from quitting.

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