Weight loss Articles

  Weight loss articles are hard to believe especially those that say you can loose 30 plus pounds in a month. This is a unrealistic goal for the average person. The only exception to this is if someone has had gastric bypass surgery. So what are you to believe when look for ways to lose weight? You can't just buy a smaller size of clothing and just fit into it, like a cartoon character. Most diet pills don't work, and those that do work you have to get through a doctor with a prescription. So unless you have money for that you aren't going to get that far if you want to go that route.

    If you have no clue on how to lose weight I'll give you some tips that I have learned over the years. One, when you want to lose weight, make sure you have the money for those healthy foods!!! I mean seriously you most likely have pretzels, chips, popcorn in your cabinets if your into salty foods. If your into sweets you most likely have cookies, cakes, chocolate, ice cream, and other sugary foods. If you don't want to waste food see if those you know will want some of your goodies, or wait until your almost done eating your goodies before you start your weight loss plan.

    When you start to lose weight it's a good idea to just at least for a week to document what you eat and how many calories at least are in the foods that you are eating. You will most likely be very surprised at how much calories you are eating. You will start to wonder what you can do to get that calorie count down!!! Well, start focusing on your drinks about a week or two into your new diet or eating routine. Trade that Pepsi into a Pepsi Max or even diet. That will drop a lot of calories during the day. If you drink bottled teas, opt for the diet version. Get the light juice or sugar-reduced version of your favorite juices. This is a big way you can start your weight loss to a nice healthy start.

    After a week or two of just focusing on your drinks, you want to think about what other ways you can reduce your calories. Well, start drinking a little bit of water if you haven't already, if you don't like water there are those 5 calories or less drink mixes in powdered, or liquid forms. These will make the water not taste so much like water to your taste buds. Next you want to start thinking about portion sizing your food that you eat. There are several websites that are great to help guide you in this.

    This is about the time you may want to look into those websites that deal with weight loss. There is an American government website called choose my plate which is an okay place to start with the basics. But what if you want more detailed information? Do you really have to go to those paid websites? The answer is no, you don't!!! You can go to sparkpeople which has a wealth of information about portion sizes and how to even start a workout routine even if you are bed bound. This site also has a chat forum where you can chat with others going through the same things as you are in life and how it affects you adapting to your new lifestyle change. You might be one of those on the go people. You could still do the sparkpeople with their mobile app, but you might like my fitness pal which even though you are logging the same items tends to take less time to do so with my fitness pal's scanner.

  At this point you will be wondering what is the ideal calorie amount for someone to be eating a day? On average the calorie count is between 1200-1500 calories daily. This will when you add an exercise routine will jump start your weight loss into over drive. If you want to loose weight faster, then opt for 1,000-1200 calories. If you opt for the lower consult your doctor first. I was given an 1,000 calorie diet once from a doctor and the weight started dropping very quickly at first. So just a very low calorie count will help you start to loose weight. Doctors say that on average you should lose 1-2 pounds per week for a healthy weight loss, though this won't always be the average especially in the beginning.

  Next you have to start an exercise routine after getting used to adding your food and getting used to making your food portions smaller if you haven't already started. Start with small steps. For example if you never leave the house and can walk you should start with just walking to the sidewalk, garbage cans, or block (whichever you feel you can do without too much exertion). You could even walk just 10 minutes three times a week if you can do that much. Just focus on doing something every other day. Slowly work up to exercising everyday.

    With both sparkpeople and my fitness pal you will notice that you are burning some of your calories that you are eating by exercising. Just keep this up for a few weeks until it becomes second nature to you. When it's second nature for you to exercise in general you can focus on exercising more to loose more weight. Just make sure that when you are exercising more that you are getting enough calories in. Sparkpeople is a great website for this as it will let you know that your food calorie is too low for your body to keep building the muscles that you are toning while exercising.

    Keep this up until you lose your weight. If you get stuck at one weight for about two weeks go to sparkpeople or another website to look at tip for those plateaus. You should start losing weight again. Once you have lost all that extra weight it isn't time to stop all that hard work you have done. You just need to adjust your settings on the website or websites that you have used to lose all that extra weight. You will find these new "maintance weight" setting giving you a few extra calories per day, this is because those 300 plus extra calories will help you stay at your new healthy weight. So you just stay watching your calorie count, exercise log, and the weight on the scale to make sure you don't gain all that weight that you originally lost and gain it back again.

I hope this helps those wondering how to tell the healthy ways to lose weight in the proper manner. Just always make sure your doctor knows in general what you are doing because you don't want to go from an over-eater to an under-eater and become anorexic!!! That would kinda defeat the all purpose because your doctor will end up having someone force feed you even if they have to use a tube to do so. I don't think you would find that very pleasant. Best of luck to you all!!!