To tip the energy balance in favor of weight loss, start by determining how many calories you should consume each day. To do so, you need to know how many calories you need to maintain your current weight. Doing this requires a few simple calculations.
First, multiply your current weight by 15 — that’s roughly the number of calories per pound of body weight needed to maintain your current weight if you are moderately active. Moderately active means getting at least 30 minutes of physical activity a day in the form of exercise (walking at a brisk pace, climbing stairs, or active, physical gardening). Let’s say you’re a woman who is 5 feet, 2 inches tall and weighs 150 pounds, and you need to lose about 15 pounds to put you in a healthy weight range. If you multiply 150 by 15, you will get 2,250, which is the number of calories per day that you need in order to maintain your current weight (weight-maintenance calories). To lose weight, you will need to get below that total. For example, to lose one to two pounds a week — a rate that experts consider safe — your food consumption should provide 500–1,000 calories less than your total weight-maintenance calories. If you need 2,250 calories a day to maintain your current weight, reduce your daily calories to 1,250–1,750. If you are sedentary, you will also need to build more activity into your day. In order to lose at least a pound a week, try to do at least 30 minutes of physical activity on most days, and reduce your daily calorie intake by at least 500 calories. However, calorie intake should not fall below 1,200 a day in women, or 1,500 a day in men, except under the supervision of a health professional. Eating too few calories can endanger your health by depriving you of needed nutrients.
Meeting Your Calorie Target
How can you meet your daily calorie target? One approach — probably the most accurate — is to add up the number of calories per serving of all the foods that you eat, and then plan your menus accordingly. You can buy books that list the calories-per-serving of many foods. In addition, the nutrition labels on all packaged foods and beverages provide calories-per-serving information. Make a point of reading the labels of the foods and drinks you use, noting the number of calories and the serving sizes. Many recipes published in cookbooks, newspapers, and magazines provide similar information.
If you hate counting calories, a different approach is to restrict how much and how often you eat, and to eat meals that are low in calories. Indeed, new dietary guidelines issued by the American Heart Association stress common sense in choosing your foods rather than focusing strictly on numbers, such as total calories or calories from fat. Whichever method you choose, research shows that sticking with a regular eating schedule — with meals and snacks planned for certain times each day — makes for the most successful approach. The same applies after you have lost weight and want to keep it off. Sticking with an eating schedule increases your chance of maintaining your new weight.
Some people focus on reducing the fat in their eating plan because, at nine calories per gram, fat by weight contains more than twice as many calories as carbohydrates or proteins (4 calories per gram). By substituting lean cuts of meat for fatty ones, avoiding high-fat packaged foods and snacks, and refraining from fat-rich products such as butter, mayonnaise, and salad dressings, you can cut out dozens or even hundreds of calories per day. On the other hand, many people mistakenly think that cutting fat always means cutting calories. Some fat-free foods actually contain more calories than the regular versions because manufacturers use extra sugar to make up for the flavor lost in removing the fat. Moreover, low-fat or nonfat foods are not low-calorie if you consume them in large quantities.
Tipping the Energy Balance
Here’s how to tip the energy balance in your favor.
If you are moderately active:
Multiply your weight by 15 to get the number of calories that you need each day to maintain your weight. If you weigh 200 pounds, 200 15 = 3,000 weight-maintenance calories.
To lose one pound each week, you have to consume 500 fewer calories a day.
3,000 - 500 = 2,500 calories.
If you are sedentary:
Follow the steps above, plus
Get 30 minutes of moderate to vigorous activity on most days. Activity of this intensity and duration will burn 150–250 calories a day.
PHYSICAL ACTIVITY SCALE
Thirty minutes of moderate- to high-intensity activity per day burns 150–250 calories. Use this chart as a guide to figure out whether you need to increase your physical activity in order to meet your weight-loss goals.
Moderate-Intensity Activities High-Intensity Activities Very High-Intensity Activities
Walking, mowing the lawn, tennis, weightlifting, biking, light aerobics, in-line skating, calisthenics Moderate jogging, stair-machine exercises, racquetball, swimming Fast jogging, stair-climbing, cross-country skiing (outdoor or machine), jumping rope
Guidelines for Weight Loss
Here are some guidelines to follow when straight calorie counting is impractical.
Eat foods that are filling and low in calories. That means meals and snacks made of whole grains, such as rice, whole-wheat bread, and oatmeal, as well as legumes, such as lentils and other beans.
When you eat meat, cut out fat and cut down portion sizes. Choose lean cuts of meat and modest amounts — about 3 or 4 ounces per serving. Depending on how they are prepared, the leanest cuts of beef are eye of round (155–217 calories per 3-ounce serving), top round (169–277 calories per 3-ounce serving), tip round (170–274 calories per 3-ounce serving), and flank steak (207–263 calories per 3-ounce serving). Use ground meat labeled 10% fat, the lowest fat content in ground beef. The leanest kinds of pork are roasted tenderloin (166 calories per 3-ounce serving), roasted top round (150 calories per 3-ounce serving), roasted lean top loin (245 calories per 3-ounce serving), and lean ham (120–157 calories per 3-ounce serving). Light-meat poultry has less fat than dark meat: Stewed light-meat chicken without skin has 159 calories per 3-ounce serving, while stewed dark-meat chicken without skin has 192 calories per 3-ounce serving.
Avoid fried foods. Frying foods adds fat and calories. For stovetop cooking, it’s better either to stir-fry foods in nonstick pans lightly coated with a cooking-oil spray or to braise them in broth or wine. Baking, broiling, and roasting leave no extra fat in your meals.
Use low-fat or nonfat dairy foods. Milk, yogurt, and cheese are good sources of protein and calcium, but the whole-milk versions of these dairy products are very high in fat.
Avoid fast foods. Hamburgers, chicken nuggets, French fries, and other fast-food meals and snacks tend to promote weight gain for two reasons. First, they are high in fat or calories, or both. Second, the "value meals" are often excessively large, and thus they tempt you to overeat.
Avoid high-fat and high-carbohydrate snacks. Both types of snacks are high in calories. Even snacks labeled "low-fat" are often high in calories because they contain large amounts of sugars and other carbohydrates.
Watch what you drink. Regular sodas, fruit juices, and, especially, alcoholic beverages are high in calories. For example, a 12-ounce can of Coca-Cola contains 154 calories, and an 8-ounce glass of lemonade, about 60–110 calories. A can of beer is about 130–170 calories; a 7-ounce gin and tonic is 171 calories; and a 3-ounce glass of white wine is 70 calories.
Eat scheduled meals and snacks. It may seem that skipping meals or cutting out snacks is a smart way to cut out calories, but doing either of these things can work against you. You need to eat regularly, even when you’re on a diet. If you don’t, you’ll feel so hungry that you may give up in frustration.
The Glycemic Index
The glycemic index is a measure of how quickly the sugar derived from a particular food is absorbed into your bloodstream. Doctors originally developed the index to help people with diabetes avoid foods that increase blood sugar, but some experts think it can also help people avoid obesity-related health problems.
The glycemic index ranks foods on a 100-point scale, with 100 being the fastest rate of absorption. Foods with sugars that are absorbed quickly have high glycemic indexes; those with sugars that are absorbed slowly have low glycemic indexes. When sugar is absorbed quickly, it increases the release of insulin, the hormone that transports sugar to the cells for fuel. Spikes in insulin levels, if they occur regularly, can promote insulin resistance, a condition in which the body doesn’t respond normally to the hormone. When insulin doesn’t function properly, levels of blood sugar and fats rise, increasing the risk for diabetes, coronary heart disease, and — possibly — stroke, kidney failure, and cancer.
In general, high-carbohydrate foods have the highest glycemic indexes; proteins and fats have glycemic indexes that are close to zero. Proponents of low-carbohydrate diets cite the glycemic index in justifying systematic reductions in carbohydrates. However, most scientists disagree. In cutting back on all foods with relatively high glycemic indexes, you would end up avoiding many healthy foods, including carrots (glycemic index of 71), sweet potatoes (glycemic index of 54), and brown rice (glycemic index of 55).
Some experts argue that people should avoid certain foods that are high on the glycemic index — or should only eat them in moderation — because they may cause insulin resistance and obesity, though this view remains controversial. The principal suspects are foods heavy in simple sugars, such as candy bars and cookies, and processed carbohydrate foods, such as potato chips, breakfast cereals, and many of the low-fat foods that have recently come on the market. In addition to wreaking havoc with your insulin levels, such foods tend to be high in calories, and excess calories are the cause of obesity.
Glycemic Indexes of Popular Foods
Food Glycemic Index
All-bran cereal 30
Apple 36
Bagel, plain 72
Banana 53
Cheese pizza 60
Chocolate 49
Corn flakes 77
Donut 76
Ice cream 61
Kidney beans 27
Milk, skim 32
Milk, whole 27
Oatmeal cookies 54
Pita bread 57
Spaghetti 41
Yogurt, low-fat with fruit and sugar 33
Yogurt, low-fat with artificial sweetener 14
Adapted with permission: International Tables of Glycemic Index, Human Nutrition Unit, Department of Biochemistry, University of Sydney
Physical Activity: How Much Is Enough?
If one person cut back on calories without exercising and another person increased exercise without cutting back on calories, the first person would lose weight more quickly. That’s because it’s easier to cut 500 calories from your diet than it is to burn 500 extra calories through exercise. You’d have to walk or run about five miles a day — or 35 miles a week — to lose one pound of fat. But if you only cut back on calories, you’re more likely to regain the weight you lose. Why should that be so? The body reacts to weight loss as if it were starving and, in response, slows its metabolism. When your metabolism slows, you burn fewer calories — even at rest. When you burn fewer calories, three things can happen. If you continue eating fewer calories, you will either stop losing weight as quickly as you have been, or you’ll stop losing weight altogether. If you increase your calorie consumption, you may actually gain weight more quickly than you have in the past. The solution is to increase your physical activity because doing so will counteract the metabolic slowdown caused by reducing calories.
A regular schedule of exercise raises not only your energy expenditure while you are exercising but also your resting energy expenditure — i.e., the rate at which you burn calories even when the workout is over and you are resting. Resting energy expenditure remains elevated as long as you exercise at least three days a week on a regular basis. Because it accounts for 60–75% of your daily energy expenditure, any increase in resting energy expenditure is extremely important to your weight-loss effort. The kinds of vigorous activity that can stimulate your metabolism include walking briskly for two miles or bike-riding uphill.
For people who are obese and who have been sedentary, any amount of physical activity is beneficial, including walking, swimming, and water aerobics. But start out slowly and gradually increase the pace and duration of such activities. Low-intensity activities — such as taking a short walk or raking leaves — won’t raise your resting energy expenditure as much as high-intensity activities will, but they have other advantages. For one thing, they help reduce body fat and build muscles — and muscles burn more calories than fat does. Regular weightlifting also builds muscle and has a similar effect.
Another benefit of regular physical activity of any sort is that it temporarily curbs your appetite. Of course, many people joke that after a workout they feel extremely hungry — and promptly indulge in a snack. But because exercise raises resting energy expenditure, people continue to burn calories at a relatively high rate. Therefore, a moderate post-exercise snack does not erase the benefits of exercise in helping people control their weight.
Starting an Exercise Program
Many people are daunted by the prospect of starting an exercise program, but it need not be overwhelming. One approach is to look at your schedule and determine where you can regularly fit in a 30-minute exercise session. For some people, this may mean getting up a half-hour earlier. For others, lunch time or after work is most convenient. Your goal is to improve your health and lose pounds by doing 30 minutes or more of an activity that’s moderately intense, five days a week. If you don’t reach this goal at first, it’s good to know that any increase in physical activity is better than none.
For some people, a less structured approach may work. You don’t have to work out at the gym or participate in a sport, although some people find that these things help them stick to a routine. Many ordinary everyday activities count as moderate-intensity exercise: taking the stairs instead of the elevator, walking instead of driving, cutting the lawn with a push mower, or playing with the children. A significant plus for busy people is that the physical activity doesn’t have to be done in a single session. You can break up the 30 minutes — for example, by taking a 10-minute walk to the post office and later having a 20-minute bike ride with the kids. Research has found that breaking up physical activity into 10-minute spurts throughout the day burns up at least as many calories as exercising in a single block of time. Once people get into the habit of setting aside time on most days for physical activity, they tend to be more open to new kinds of activities — because they feel stronger and more capable of exerting themselves. People who had never considered taking up a new sport might find themselves wielding tennis racquets, strapping on cross-country skis, or joining a recreational volleyball team. Becoming more active over time helps the effort to keep pounds off.
Adopting Healthier Habits
Calorie restriction and exercise help many people lose weight, but only for as long as they keep up the effort. And the same environmental and psychological factors that accounted for the weight gain in the first place can play a role in causing someone to stop exercising or start consuming too many calories. The difficulty in sustaining a diet and exercise routine is one of the main reasons that people who lose weight fail to keep it off. But the difference between long-term success and failure is the ability to make the changes in your diet and activity level permanent.
Certain strategies are useful for everyone who wants to lose weight, regardless of the main causes or severity of their obesity. Many of the following strategies seem like common sense, but they are easily overlooked. You're most likely to follow them if you plan for them in advance.
Eat slowly. Chewing and swallowing your food at a leisurely pace can help you keep from overeating. Here's why: It takes about 20 minutes for your brain to "tell" you when you feel full. Until then, you continue to feel hungry and want to eat. If you eat quickly, you'll end up consuming more than you need to feel full. But eating slowly gives your brain the time it needs to signal that you've had enough.
Make changes gradually. Don't expect to change your diet and activity level overnight. Instead of switching all at once to a low-calorie eating plan, try gradually decreasing the calories of your meals and snacks. For example, start by cutting out snacking or limiting yourself to certain snacks at certain times of day (such as a mid-morning banana or a late-afternoon apple). Also, gradually reduce the calorie content of particular foods. For example, if you're used to drinking whole milk, first switch to milk with 2% fat; then, as you get used to the taste of less fat, go on to milk with 1% fat and finally to skim milk. Another strategy is to lower the calorie content of one meal at a time. In the first week, you might want to eat a low-calorie breakfast, but keep lunch and dinner the same as before. During the second week, you might reduce the calorie content of your lunch. Finally, you can begin eating low-calorie dinners.
Keep a record. Keeping a daily log of what you eat and what physical activities you engage in can help keep you motivated to stay with your diet and exercise plan. Looking over a week's worth of entries can tell you how successful you've been and can help you identify areas where you need to improve.
Seek social support. You'll find it easier to maintain behavioral changes if you have the support and encouragement of others. Social support can come in many forms and from various people. For starters, ask your family members to keep high-calorie foods out of the house, or at least to refrain from eating them in front of you. You might even try to enlist your family to eat the same meals you do. Exercise with someone else, or join a support group. The camaraderie can help keep your spirits up during the inevitable periods when you become discouraged with your progress.
Use a list when buying food. Stick to your grocery list, and steer clear of those aisles or areas with the kinds of calorie-dense foods that you need to avoid.
Out of sight, out of mind. At home, put the most tempting foods high up in the cupboard, at the very back of the fridge, or in other inconvenient spots. Replace the cookie jar and candy bowl with a fruit bowl. Never eat directly out of a large package; many small containers are better than a few large ones, because they provide convenient stopping points. And don't put out too many different varieties of the same kind of food — you'll be tempted to sample from each one and eat a lot more than if you were faced with fewer choices.
Don't go all out when eating out. Eat a low-calorie snack before going out; you're less likely to go off your diet if you're feeling full when you get to the party or restaurant. Go elsewhere for after-dinner coffee so you are less tempted to segue right into dessert.
Make a plan for special occasions. Decide how much you're going to eat before an event, and do your best to stick with that plan. Set some limits before you go to the movies or watch the Sunday afternoon football games. It's so easy to mindlessly munch when you're in front of a screen of any kind.
Be a copycat. When eating with a group of people, look around. Who's eating the least? Who has the healthiest food on their plate? Model your eating habits on those people's.
Find physical activities that you enjoy. For example, if you don't like exercising outdoors on cold days, join a fitness club, or get an exercise bicycle and hand weights to use at home. If the problem is a time crunch, exercise in increments of 10 minutes whenever you have the time — before work, after work, or during your lunch hour.
Reduce stress. If you overeat when you are under stress, find a stress-reduction method that works for you: meditation, relaxation techniques, listening to music, exercising, or talking to a friend.
Keeping the Weight Off
There is nothing more discouraging to someone embarking on a weight-loss plan than the oft-cited statistic that 95% of people who lose weight will regain it within a few years. The difficulty in sticking with a long-term weight-maintenance plan is one of the main reasons that weight-loss programs fail. Recently, however, researchers have decided to study the success stories — people who have lost weight and kept it off for many years — to look for clues that might be applied more broadly. Researchers in a project called the National Weight Control Registry have been collecting information on such people and recording what they did to achieve their goals.
Such research has disclosed that people who maintain weight loss over the long term are those who develop methods of incorporating healthy, low-calorie eating and regular physical activity into their daily lives. They are also highly motivated to continue doing so over the long term. Some are motivated by an experience that frightened them — for example, finding out that they were at high risk for a serious illness. Others reported feeling extremely unhappy with the way they looked and felt.
Their diet plans and physical activities differed widely, but one thing that these individuals had in common was that they chose strategies that they liked, that fulfilled some personal goal, and that they could stick with. For example, one man reported that, as a teenager, he was able to lose 75 pounds, reducing his weight from 240 to 165 pounds, because he wanted to make himself more attractive to girls. Over the next 19 years, he gradually regained 24 pounds, reaching 189 pounds. In 1994, however, he decided to prevent further weight gain by committing himself to regular exercise on a treadmill. Since then, his weight dropped to 185 pounds and he has maintained this weight for two years.
In what was certainly one of the greatest success stories in the registry, one woman managed to overcome a strong genetic predisposition toward obesity and lose more than half her weight. She had had obesity since childhood, and at age 36 she reached her greatest weight, 325 pounds. The turning point came when an earthquake shut down the elevator in her apartment building, and she found herself unable to climb the stairs to her apartment. Over the next two years she lost 160 pounds by dieting and exercising. She ate smaller portions of food, cut back on fat, and started walking regularly. She added biking, weight training, and yoga to her regimen of physical activity. She has maintained her new weight at 165 pounds for four years. "People told me that fat was in my genes, and there was nothing I could do about it," she wrote to the researchers. "I say, my ‘jeans’ are now size 11/12!"
Not everyone can rely on an earthquake for motivation, but it is possible to search for motivating factors in your own life. For some people, serious health problems may serve that function; for others, a romantic interest or career advancement may be key. Likewise, no weight-loss plan will work for everyone. Ultimately, you have to find a way to eat healthfully and get regular physical activity that you enjoy. For some people, the answer may be a vegetarian diet, scheduled tennis matches, and biking. Others might prefer having at least some lean meat or fish, and taking long walks for exercise.
Research has shown that the more freedom people have in planning their weight-loss plans, the greater their prospects for success. A 1997 study in the British Medical Journal compared the outcomes of women following two maintenance-diet plans having lost weight through a medically supervised weight-loss plan. Over a yearlong period, one group of women selected meals and snacks from a menu of foods that added up to a set number of calories per day. The other group could eat whatever they wanted within certain general guidelines. The guidelines involved avoiding fried foods, cutting back or eliminating the use of butter or margarine on bread, eating lean meats, and eating more complex carbohydrates, such as brown rice or whole-wheat bread. After one year, the women on the calorie-restricted diet regained an average of nine pounds, but those who ate what they wanted — within the healthy-eating guidelines — regained less than half that amount.
Studying Success
To sum up, research has identified several characteristics of people who have successfully kept pounds off. People who want to lose weight might consider following their example.
About half the people in the National Weight Control Registry who maintained weight loss for six years did so on their own, without help from health professionals, weight-loss drugs, or personal trainers. The rest entered programs or saw weight-control physicians. Less than 2% had had gastric surgery.
The people in the registry ate on a schedule of three meals and two snacks a day and didn’t deviate from it.
They also ate healthier foods in smaller amounts and exercised regularly — and kept on doing these things even after they reached their target weights.
They reduced their consumption of junk foods, such as cookies, donuts, and ice cream.
They did not lose weight quickly, but they lost it consistently. Some people lost weight over a period of years.
Other research shows that among perhaps half of all people who lost weight over the long term, frequent contact with a health care practitioner led to more successful weight-loss maintenance. Such visits, even if they lasted only a few minutes and consisted of little more than being weighed by a nurse, helped keep people motivated to eat healthfully and stay active enough to maintain their weight loss.
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lol and after that i decided i needed more stretching...so i looked over my dvr for fitTV workouts and did the stretch max (with the resistance band) for stretching, felt good afterwards (while also trying to keep my son off me and my head while laying down and stretching 
