How to Lose One Pound a Week

This particular article is about exactly how to lose 1 pound a week. Now that may not seem like much, but research shows that the slower you lose weight the more likely you are to keep it off. Your goal should be to lose anywhere from 1-2 pounds a week. This article will give you a great start on that goal.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Things You’ll Need:

• Motivation
• Patience
• Food Journal (either online or pen and paper)
• Calculator
• Place to Exercise (Either at home or a gym)

1. Make The Right Decision The first step in losing weight is making the decision. Why do you want to lose weight? Is it just for looks, or for health also? This will determine how much you are willing to work at this. Alot of this will not be easy, but it will get easier. Just because you fall short one day just means that you have to pick it back up the next day and keep on going.
2. Calculate The next step is to calculate about how many calories your body requires every day just to function normally. Many people don't understand that your body does burn calories at rest. First, your BMR, or basal metabolic rate (metabolism), is the energy (measured in calories) expended by the body at rest to maintain normal bodily functions. This value makes up about 60-70% of the calories we burn. The rest of the calories you burn come from the daily activity you do. This value is known as your AMR (Active Metabolic Rate) and once you calculate both of these numbers you can then add them together for your DER or Daily Energy Requirement. The following website has a great calculator for getting an estimate of your DER:
   http://www.preventdisease.com/healthtools/articles/bmr.html
3. Track Next you need to find out exactly how many calories you are eating on a daily basis. This way you can find your weaknesses and make changes where they are needed. The easiest way I know of to do this is with an online database/calculator. There is an great free tracker at the following website:
   http://www.mypyramidtracker.gov/
   You can go to that website and register for free and use their food and exercise tracker. The hardest part is just getting started but once you do this for a few weeks it will become alot easier. What I want you to do before you make any changes at all, is to track everything you eat and all your exercise for a month, even down to that stick of gum or piece of candy. Everything matters! Once you have tracked your eating and exercise habits for a month, you can then get an average of your caloric intake and how many calories you are burning through exercise. With this information you can look at both your average actual daily caloric intake/exercise and your DER to see how close they are.
4. Exercise Now that you have an estimate of how many calories your body requires every day, you can now decide on the amount of calories you want to either cut out of your diet, burn with extra exercise, or a combination of both (which is what I recommend). One of the most important things to remember is that 1 pound of fat equals 3,500 calories. So in order to lose 1 pound of fat in one week, you can divide 3,500 by 7 (days in a week) and get 500 calories that you need to cut out every day. That is a great starting point, but if you decide to try to lose more weight than that you can up that amount to meet your goal.
5. Be Smart Now it is time to decide where you can cut calories and how much more exercise you need on a daily basis. If you consistently just decrease your caloric intake without increasing your physical activity levels, you risk reducing your BMR levels. This could force your body to burn less calories, which may eventually lead to further long-term weight gain also making it even more difficult to lose that weight. The following website has some great calculators to use to determine an estimate of how many calories you will burn with various activities:
   http://preventdisease.com/healthtools/tools.html
6. Just Do It! Now it is time to put this into action! Take every day as it comes, and if you fall short one day just try your best to make up for it the rest of the week. You do not have to deprive yourself, but there is a difference in eating a bite or two of something and just eating the whole thing because it's there. You do not have to be a member of the "clean plate club!"

Tips & Warnings

• I recommend doing at least 30-45 minutes every single day of some type of cardio exercise whether it's walking or riding a bike.
• You should also have a consistent strength training program where you are working out 2-3 times every week with weights of some kind.
• You should always stretch after, not before, exercising. A 5 minute warm-up and cool-down period should also be included in your workout schedule.
• Your BMR is influenced by a number of factors, including age, weight, height, gender, environmental temperature, dieting, and exercise habits.
• Because of the increased activity of cells undergoing division, the younger the person, the higher the metabolism.
• The taller and heavier a person is, the faster their metabolism.
• Because of the greater percentage of lean muscle tissue in the male body, men generally have a 10-15% faster BMR than women.
• Restrictive and traditional diets (such as Atkins or other low carb diets)may cause your BMR to drop as much as 20%! This means you will burn LESS calories.
• BMR and AMR calculators should only be used to provide a rough guideline on daily energy expended.