Asking How Can I Lose Weight?
Sometimes the questions I get from people at my gym, or via e mail, are very simple sounding and straight forward, but if you scratch the surface a little, you realize that there’s much more going on than one would initially summarize. Since I became a personal trainer in Austin over 20 years ago, one such question keeps popping up quite often. People asking me how can I lose weight?
There’s as many responses to the how can I lose weight question as there are reasons why you aren’t losing any weight. Ask yourself if you want to lose water weight or body fat weight. Maybe some of both? If it’s body fat, the first thing to consider is medical issues. How is your thyroid? What does your metabolism look like? Do you have any digestive disorders such as Crohns, IBS, etc? Anything that is amiss in the medical department needs to be remedied before you can seriously consider losing weight.
How can I lose weight? By exercising. If you make a plan to do some cardiovascular (cardio) exercise every morning upon waking, with an empty stomach other than water, you will shed some weight. The reason we need to do the cardio first thing, and on an empty stomach, is because our glycogen levels are depleted in the morning as we’ve fasted all night. Think of the word breakfast, and split it in half. It means break the fast. If we’re doing cardio on an empty stomach, we’re burning fat and oxygen for fuel. Do this with consistency, and you will lose weight.
How can I lose weight? By drinking enough water. You need to hydrate your body or you will slow down your digestion, retain water, be sluggish, and not allow your body to dispose of it’s by products efficiently. In essence, you’ll be full of it, so to speak. Many studies have shown that proper hydration allows better brain function, mood elevation, and so on. How much water should you drink? A basic estimation is to take your body weight and then split in half. That would be how many ounces to start with. Do that a day or 2 and see how you feel. You can adjust the levels from there depending upon how you feel as well as the color of your urine.
How can I lose weight? Eat better. If you exercise but eat poorly, or even not well enough, you won’t lose weight. Don’t worry about cutting carbs, or jumping on board with whatever the fad diet or cleanse of the week is. Simply eat a balanced and healthy diet throughout the day. Be sure to consume enough of each macronutrient to fuel your body and build muscle tissue when you are in recovery mode, but don’t consume too much so that it will be stored as fat on your body. Be sure to eat a healthy amount of vegetables as they are packed with vitamins, have plenty of antioxidants, and some, like asparagus, for example, act as a great diuretic.
Doing anything above in and of itself won’t make you lose weight. If you are still asking yourself how can I lose weight, simply put all of the ingredients I’ve listed above together, mix them thoroughly, do them regularly, and consistently, and presto! You will lose weight.
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Andy
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