Are You Wondering How Can I Lose A Lot Of Weight Quickly?
One question I see asked of me online very frequently, is how can I lose a lot of weight quickly? It is a seemingly innocuous question, but the parameters of it are so large, because so much of that question is open to personal interpretation. How much weight, and how quickly, come to mind is the most obvious questions needing answering before we can even attempt to answer this question in any kind of a meaningful fashion.
As a longtime personal trainer in South Austin I get an awful lot of questions, but this one, the how can I lose a lot of weight quickly question, ranks amongst the most popular of all time. Naturally, everybody wants instant gratification, and usually accompanied by minimal effort. It is, after all, natural to want the most and expend the least. Unfortunately, fitness and health, especially weight loss, don’t work that way. If you want to lose weight, you’re going to have to work it off. That doesn’t necessarily mean just working in the gym, on a bike, on a running trail, or anything like that. It also means that you are going to be working mentally to retain sight of your goal, to diligently and consistently make good decisions at mealtime, and so on.
How can I lose a lot of weight quickly? Good question. Let’s assume that we have a female who is 5ft 4 inches tall and weighs 200 lbs. For further consideration, let’s say she’s 30 years old, is otherwise healthy, and has poor eating habits. We can even spice it up and say that she is an emotional eater. If she comes along and asks me how can I lose a lot of weight quickly, and reveals that she’s in good health other than her obesity, is ready to work hard, be consistent, etc, how would I approach that? For starters, I would outline a proper nutrition plan for her based upon a food journal which I would have her submit to me that would consist of 4, maybe 5 typical day’s of her current diet, including setting a target amount for water consumption. Nobody, and I mean nobody, unless there are millions of dollars on the line, is going to eat what they consider to be disgusting, or even unappetizing, consistently. When you approach weight loss, you want to do so with long-term goals as well as long-term sustainability, or it’s all in vain. The next thing I would have this fictitious client do, is get up in the morning 30 minutes earlier than normal, and take a nice brisk walk, before she ingests, anything other than water. This way, with her glycogen stores empty from a night of fasting, she will be burning fat and oxygen as fuel for her walk, as opposed to whatever she were to eat before she takes off on her stroll.
This is a rather common sense, and basic synopsis of how one would go about losing weight without the extenuating circumstances that I often come across, such as thyroid issues, previous injuries that have resulted in postural distortions, etc, etc. It goes without saying, that if you want to lose an exorbitant amount of weight, you will have to follow these instructions, be consistent about it, even and especially when you don’t feel like it, and realize that it’s going to take that much longer to lose that much more weight.
The second half of the how can I lose a lot of weight quickly answer, is defining what we mean by quickly. If you are looking to lose 20 lb in a week, other than amputation, it isn’t going to happen. I suppose you could not eat anything or drink any water at all for as long as your body survives, quickly weigh yourself, and then as soon as you are discharged from the hospitaland have the IV bags removed, see how you feel, but that’s not exactly an intelligent approach. The one pitfall that I see constantly as an Austin personal trainer for the last 20-plus years, is people both wanting and expecting the results to happen overnight. It’s not realistic, and usually, the quicker the results come, either the more unhealthy the process is, or the shorter lasting the results will be. You can definitely cut out 10 lbs in a week, but it will not be fat… it will simply be water weight. Considering our bodies are roughly 65 to 70 percent water in composition on average, it’s really not that difficult through simple manipulation of carbohydrates as well as water intake, and sodium, to make the scale fly in either direction. That is only temporary though. For lasting results you want to follow the aforementioned weight loss plan in the first part of the how can I lose weight quickly answer where we had our fictitious client exercising on an empty stomach, drinking sufficient amounts of water, and eating properly everyday. So how much weight can you actually lose if you were trying to speed up the process without carb-loading, depleting, etc? I tell my personal training clients that it’s both safe, and realistic, to shoot for 1 to 3 lbs of weight loss per week. Some of that will be fat, but most of it will be water. In the long-term, however, you will be losing way more fat than you will water if you stick to the nutritional guidelines your trainer has given you, as well as stay consistent in your efforts.
If you’re very serious about losing weight, don’t ask me how can I lose a lot of weight quickly. Simply clean up your diet, put on your sneakers, and get busy with it.
Andy is a top notch trainer for fitness novices to seasoned body builders. He has a breadth of knowledge matched only by very few in the fitness industry today.
Andy
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