Easiest Ways To Lose Weight

The easiest ways to lose weight are the ways that you are going to be able to keep to, ways that you can integrate into your daily life, your routine. If you just do something for the short term and lose the weight but then go straight back to how you were before you will just put the weight right back on, that’s why crash diets and other types of diets don‘t work.

There are only two things you need to do to lose weight:

1) Have a balanced and healthy diet 2) Exercise

That’s it, yes it is that simple there are no secrets that people are hiding, it all comes down to you wanting to change and then taking action to change.

Set yourself a goal, without a goal it makes it harder. Yes I know your goal is to lose weight, but I want you to be specific, why do you want to lose weight, is there a specific reason, are you going on holiday, do you want to go down a dress size? Think about it, as having clear goals will help you stay motivated.

Ok, so you have your reason now and now you need to break it down further – so how much weight do you want to lose, 5lbs, 10lbs be specific. Once you have a specific weight you want to lose in mind it is easy to be able to measure it, you can weigh yourself, or I would prefer you take body measurements, I e chest, waist, hip, or if you are going to the gym you can ask for one of the trainers to take your body fat percentage.

You can weigh yourself as well if you wish, but the reason I prefer measurements is because when you start exercising, if you start losing fat but are also putting on muscle then the scales are not going to help you see the difference as muscle weights more than fat.

A healthy and realistic amount of weight to lose is 1-2lbs per week so that should hep you with putting a time limit on your goal. I would add in some other goals, smaller goals that are going to help you lose the weight, maybe if you are just starting exercising for the first time, then you will have a smaller goal of going to the gym every other day, or 5 days a week, or even buying the clothes/shoes you will need to work out in. Having goals make it easier for you to achieve what you want, plus every time you achieve a smaller goal it brings you closer to where you want to be.

Ok enough about goals, now for the easiest ways to lose weight.

1)A healthy balanced diet

The estimated average daily calorie requirement is 2000 for women and 2500 for men, this is just an estimate and will depend on your age, weight, height, body composition and levels of activity.

So if you are consuming more than you expend the extra calories will be turned in to fat so you need to look at what you eat. A healthy balanced diet consists of five food groups.

1.Bread, Cereals and Potatoes 33%- This group form the basis of most meals, choose the wholemeal/wholegrain versions

2.Fruits and Vegetables 33%- It is advised that we should eat 5 portions of fruit and vegetables a day

3. Milk and dairy 15% – go for the reduced fat versions

4. Meats, fish and alternatives 12 %

5. Foods containing sugar or fat 7%- this should be minimized as these foods are what cause the weight gain.

2)Exercise

This is the last thing for your easiest ways to lose weight. You put on weight when you eat more calories than you expend so if you start exercising you will start expending more calories. Simple. There are two types of exercising that will help you reach your goal.

Cardio:

Fast walking, jogging, running, skipping, boxing, swimming, cycling al these forms of exercise are cardio based and will help you lose the most weight. You should be aiming to do any one of these activities at least 5 days per week for at least 25 mins. So choose the exercise that you will enjoy, you can always switch exercises if you become bored or find you don’t enjoy of them. Maybe you like a sport, such as badminton, squash etc, then do that if it is something you will do regularly, or include it once a week and do a different exercise on the other days. The choice is yours and the key is choosing an exercise that you will enjoy.

Now if you are jogging, swimming cycling etc you can go at a steady pace for 40-60mins per session and burn off your calories or you can do interval training you will burn off more calories in a shorter amount of time, so only need to do 25-30mins per session.

Interval training is where there are bursts of high intensity work between reduced intensity work. For example:

5min warm up 1min reduced intensity 1min high intensity 1 min reduced intensity 1 min high intensity etc continuing for the desired time of the work out. 5-8min cool down

The ratios can be changed so you could do 1min reduced 30 second high intensity etc.

Resistance training:

Yes using weights will help you with weight loss, increase in muscle will increase your metabolism which means you will burn more fat when you are not even doing anything.

I suggest squats, lunges, push ups, shoulder press, bench press, plank etc. Compound exercises that use your full body, use free weights at the gym or home instead of machines as it will help increase your core strength and use the major, minor and stabaliser muscles which wouldn’t normally get a work out if you use weight machines. Alternatively try a class, circuit training is one I would recommend.

Please remember to get advice from your doctor if you have not exercised for a long time or if you suffer from any heart conditions.

These are the easiest ways to lose weight, all it takes is you to start doing them today. If you do miss a session or eat something unhealthy don’t worry just get right back to doing what you were doing before and keep going. Action is what makes thing happen.

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