Weight Loss and the Masochist

So you want to lose weight. You ask your friends how they've lost weight, and then stare at them in bug-eyed amazement as they describe phenemonal acts of willpower and feats of endurance in the gym that transcend those of the mere mortal.

But most of all, you wonder if you need to be a masochist to lose weight. Everyone talks about grueling two-hour-long workouts, hundreds of ab crunches, and eating so little food that suddenly "willpower" seems like a four letter word.

Relax. You don't need to inflict pain on yourself to lose weight.

First off, you shouldn't be doing two hour workouts. If you "cardio yourself to death," your body is going to start clinging to fat. Your body is adaptable, remember? So when you tell it that it needs to be ready for multiple long workouts a week, it's going to conserve fat so it has the energy to do those workouts. OR your body will start burning off your muscle since that's a nice, easy energy source for it to grab.

Either way, you're going to end up looking soft and jiggly rather than firm.

Same goes with eating. If you're hungry, you're not eating enough! And I'm talking real hunger here (e.g., hunger pangs, not psychological hunger). Don't even think of dropping below 1200 cals or your body will think it's starving, and you'll have a harder time losing weight / burning fat.

Best way to go about it is to figure out how much you currently eat by logging your food intake. If you aren't gaining weight nor losing weight with your current food intake, then you know those are your maintenance calories.

Your next step is to slowly start dropping calories. If you use 500 calories per day less than your maintenance, in one week you'll drop a pound (there are roughly 3500 calories in a pound, so 500 calories times 7 days is a loss of 3500 calories/one pound). So you can do a combination of decreasing your calorie intake and upping your calorie expenditure through exercise to create your 500 calorie deficit.

Now let's suppose you find that 1500 daily calories is what you need to safely lose a pound of fat per week. If you're thinking that's 500 calories spread over three meals, think again. Bet you'll get hungry between those three meals, won't ya?

Instead of doing three meals, do five to six meals spread evenly throughout the day. So for example, eat five meals of 300 calories each. Not only does it keep you from being hungry since you're eating something many times a day, you're also "stoking up" your metabolism each time you eat. Cool benefit, eh?

To learn more, read some weight loss tips here.