The Facts of Loosing Weight

Loose Weight

How to you think of your body? Is it just a lump of fat causing you to look and feel overweight? Or is it a svelte, smooth running machine? Chances are, like most of us, you are somewhere in between on most days. And most days you really do want to loose weight.

In many ways, your body is like a scale – you know the type, the ones with a balance on each side like they use for weighing gold in the old time movies. Only on this scale you are measuring calories in and calories out.

If you want to keep your current weight, you must keep the scale balanced. Same calories in and same calories out. If you get out of balance with more calories in, you gain weight in the form of fat (you can gain weight in the form of muscle but that is another story.). If you get out of balance with more calories out, you loose weight.

This calories deficit is what generates your weight loss. For example if you drop (say over a week) about 3,500 calories, you should lose about 1 pound of weight or body fat. You can drop that 3,500 calories either by not eating it or through exercise.

There are three simple ways to loose weight. First, increase you rate of metabolism, how much energy your body burns. Gaining lean muscle through strength training (not for bulking up) will help you burn calories. For example your body can burn up to 50 more calories for every one pound gain of muscle.

Secondly, eat less. Eating 1000 less calories a day will cause you to lose approximately 2 pounds a week. Five hundred calories a day will help you to lose one pound a week.

Last, do work out more. Going for good brisk walk three or four times a week will go a long way to help you lose two pounds.

If you do all three, you will less stressed than if you tried to loose weight by just focusing on one of the above points.