Are you thinking of following a quick fat loss diet? For your long term health, make sure the diet is based on sound principles that have proven to result in both fat loss and overall health. If you lose too much, too fast, you'll just be setting yourself up for failure.
The following should give you some guidelines on choosing a plan that works for you. Remember that fads come and go, but effective fat loss principles basically stay the same.
The first step in planning your diet is to determine the number of calories you consume on a daily basis. How do you figure that out? The best thing to do is get a calorie counter that has a database of foods and a lookup feature. After every meal or snack, you log what you've eaten or had to drink and the calorie counter will calculate the totals for you. Of course, you can always just use a pencil and paper and tally up the results yourself.
You should count your calories for about a week to get a good idea of the average number of daily calories you're consuming. Calorie counting seems to have a powerful psychological effect as well. It will make you think twice about eating that extra dessert or serving of fries if you have to add it to your score.
The next step will be to determine the number of calories you need to maintain your present weight. For this purpose, you can use a Resting Metabolic Rate Calculator.
To lose weight, you need to start eating fewer calories than your maintenance level. The recommended amount of calories to cut out for effective weight loss is between 15-20% of the daily maintenance level.
Here are a couple of examples:
A 27 year-old woman who is 5 feet 4 inches tall, weighs 130 pounds and gets light exercise 2 or 3 times per week would have a maintenance level of around 1,900 calories daily. She would need to cut out between 285-380 calories per day to lose weight.
A 45 year-old man who is 5 feet 10 inches tall, weighs 180 pounds and leads a very active lifestyle would need around 3,500 calories daily to maintain his weight. He would need to cut his calorie consumption by between 525-700 calories daily to lose weight.
Cutting out more than 20% of your maintenance level calories is not recommended for any quick fat loss diet. Doing so will only slow down your metabolism, which will means you'll burn fewer calories.
When following a quick fat loss diet, it's important to ensure that you're meeting your nutritional needs. You can't just consume empty calories from refined sources like sugar or starchy foods. Your calories need to come from fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grains, low fat dairy products and lean meat.
The optimal balance would be to get 45% of your calories from carbohydrates, 35% from lean protein sources and 20% from healthy fat sources.
Eating breakfast, lunch and dinner won't work for a quick fat loss diet. You will need to eat smaller amounts more frequently, perhaps 5-7 smaller meals per day. That means eating every 2 to 3 hours throughout the day. This has the added bonuses of keeping up your energy levels, maintaining your lean muscle mass and making your digestive system work more efficiently.
Any quick fat loss diet will have drinking lots of water every day. For the woman in the example above, the recommended amount of water to drink is 78 ounces daily. The man should be drinking 162 ounces per day. This probably seems like a lot, but dehydration will definitely hamper your quick fat loss efforts.
Perhaps the most important step in a quick fat loss diet is incorporating a suitable exercise program. You won't lose weight quickly by simply reducing the number of calories you consume. You need to speed up your metabolism by doing exercises that increase your lean muscle mass.
The body works harder to maintain muscle, so by increasing your muscle mass, you will burn through more calories even while resting.
Muscle mass can be added through strength training workouts using free weights. If you combine strength training with high intensity cardio workouts, you'll get the results you're looking for with your quick fat loss diet.
An effective diet should be built around more than just cutting calories and eating the right kinds of food. You develop total body fitness by combining proper nutrition with strength training and cardio workouts. Put all of these things together and you'll get quick and lasting fat-burning results and more importantly, long-term overall health.
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