What do you think is the best way to lose wieght quickly?

losing it fast doesn’t mean getting it off and keeping it off.

Burn more calories than you consume. That’s all.

The only way to lose weight the healthy way and keep it off is by eating right and exercising. This means a lifestyle change.

I know it’s a struggle, but what they’ve said above really is the whole ballgame. You have to change the way you think about it and keep at it. If you backslide don’t throw up your hands like it’s all over. Just get right back to doing the right things sooner instead of gaining back everything you lost. You just have to catch yourself sooner.

Once you cut out the things like granite and titanium alloy from your diet you’ll lose weight like nobody’s business.

@seekingwolf Okay, help me out here. My trainer told me to consume between 1100 and 1200 calories a day, assuming I come to the gym and do my cardio/strength routine. What I don’t get is, how the HELL am I supposed to burn over 1000 calories in one visit to the gym?!? I can see 400 or 500…hell, even 700 max. But I just don’t see how it’s possible to burn more than you consume unless you’re getting way too few calories.

I’d love some advice on this…

You don’t only burn calories while you’re at the gym. Your body burns calories just keeping you alive throughout the day, and you burn extra calories recouping from your trip to the gym, as well. Plus, the more muscle you have, the more calories you burn (or so I understand).

If you only ate 500 calories a day, you’d be starving yourself and your metabolism would slow down to almost nothing to try and save you. The trick is to eat healthy calories that will help your body maintain and build itself after your workouts, not just empty calories that will leave your body craving more.

@melanie81: amanderveen took the words out of my….fingertips. Your resting metabolism will burn at least 1200 calories/day, and possibly a lot more depending on your weight and your normal activity level.

Unless you are extraordinarily tiny, I find it concerning that your trainer is telling you to eat so little. 1100–1200 calories isn’t really enough for most people, and if your body thinks it’s starving, losing weight is going to be a sisyphean task. Can you get a second opinion from a nutritionist or doctor?

Ahhh…thanks for the info! Now it all makes sense.

You know, that trainer was great, but has since been transferred to another gym in a different city. I could always ask another trainer for a second opinion. Honestly, all I do all day is get ready for work, sit at a desk all day, then drive home, cook dinner, and go to bed. Maybe that’s why he only suggested 1200; b/c he knows I’m a lazy ass! ha…I kid.

@melanie81 here is a rough rule of thumb

3500 cal= approx 1 lb

The average moerately active young woman uses about 2000 calories/day so if you only consume 1200 calories, you will lose about 1 lb every 4 days (2000–1200=800 cal shortfall X4=3200 cal loss)or 7lbs/mo A full hour workout burns 300–400 so if you do that 5 days a week that can bring your weight loss to 10lbs/mo which is pretty high.

But here is the kicker…Our bodies spent 40,000 years adapting to very uncertain circumstances. It has been less than 200 years that most westerners have had enough to eat. Over those thousands of years the human body learned a pretty neat trick. When food was scarce the body can slow some of its functions down to conserve calories. The more the metabolism has to slow down the slower it is to rev up to normal rates again when food is more available.

So when you take in fewer calories and you reach your target weight and then try and junp back to a 2200 maint diet, you may actually put on a few lbs.

And here’s another sad fact. If you keep to that very reasonable diet (forget the fast food) but enjoy a couple of beers (300 cal) on Saturday night and add a bagel lox & schmear on Sunday morning (700cal) You can put on 10 lbs a year. That could be 150 lbs between 25 and 40!

Eat less and make everything yourself. Which is to say if you didn’t make it, you can’t eat it. Eat less sugar. Don’t drink alcohol.

For me, that means I end up eating a lot of fruits and veggies, cut back on carbs (I’m not great at making bread or pasta), eat only meat with really strong flavors so I can cook the veggies in it a bit of leftover fat, and stop drinking a bottle of wine a week. The wine is usually replaced by milk or water.

It also means I know everything that’s gone into my food. If it’s unhealthy, I have only myself to blame. Because I only eat food I make, I have to plan in advance and bring my meals to work.

Weight loss is not a faucet you can turn on and off. It really truly is a lifestyle change. You might want to focus more on living a healthy life and letting your body take the shape it feels is appropriate. Others have described how our bodies work regarding calories. A quick recap: if you consume more calories than your body needs and burns, it stores the energy as fat; if you eat less than what you need and burn, your body takes it from the fat storage. The two variables you have control over are what you eat, and what you burn. So eating less calories or burning more calories will result in weight loss in a normal healthy person. Veggies are good to eat because they are good calorie value (lots of food for little calories), chocolate and lard are bad to eat (little food for lots of calories). Burning calories boils down to exercise or other physical activity, so you might as well find an exercise routine you love to do (yes, love, not like or tolerate or even hate) because you’ll need to make it a part of your lifestyle.

One last point: the WORST thing to do to yourself is yo-yoing, or going on a diet for a few months successfully, then stopping and gaining the weight back, then going back on the diet for another few months, etc. Sadly, people who fall prey to the diet industry tend to have this happen to themselves, because they are following an outside-imposed regime and they tire of it eventually or just lose motivation to keep going. That’s why you need to make lifestyle changes in place of following Diet X for a few months and expecting the weight to stay off forever. You have to make changes that you WANT to do and KEEP doing them for the rest of your life. THAT’S the best way to lose weight.

A medically supervised very low calorie diet. THIS one worked for me. I lost 80 lbs and have maintained it with their program for 3 years.

Beyond this, if you work out to add muscle, you’ll win twice over—you’ll lose weight more slowly, but you’ll be replacing not-so-dense fat with dense muscle, and muscle consumes more calories when resting than fat does, so you’ll lose fat faster.

But the only thing I’ve found that works for me is eating mindfully. When I pay attention to what I eat and make an effort to eat healthfully, I lose weight quickly. Diet food plans don’t work; healthy choices at every meal, plus allowing myself to have cookies or ice cream when I want, means I lose weight a lot faster.

(And so you know where I’m coming from: I’ve lost 60 pounds over the past two years, and I have about another 40 pounds to go.)