If you are 100 pounds or more overweight, extreme weight loss can be crucial to your health and will also eventually save your life. However, extreme weight loss is not without risk. A safe and effective extreme weight loss diet requires a healthy combination of fitness, diet, and lifestyle changes. If you are extremely overweight, you are not going to be able to go right out and start running 5 miles per day or doing yoga. At the same time, it is going to be difficult and dangerous to cut down to a 1,500 calorie per day diet. But there are things you can do that will begin to help immediately and will change your body and health for the better over the long run.
If you really want to start the weight loss process and maintain it, it is important to have a long term plan and to start with small steps but make sure that you continue to make progress. For example, if you are 6 feet tall and weigh 400 pounds, and are shooting to get back to 200 pounds, you need to realize that this is something that is probably going to take some time. Most likely it will take a year or even two years. It is not going to happen overnight. If it does you are losing weight at a dangerous rate and should consult a physician on the safety of your program.
To start off, you will want to set weekly and monthly goals based on your long term weight loss goal. If you hope to lose 100 pounds in the first year, then you will need to lose approximately two pounds per week. To do so, you will want to calculate your BMR and you will have to adjust your diet and exercise accordingly to make sure that you are taking in at least 7,000 net calories per week below your current BMR. The trick here is that your BMR will adjust on a weekly basis, so you will continually need to recalculate based on your current weight loss.
It is also important that you adjust the types of foods and beverages you are taking in. An ideal diet should have a healthy mix of carbohydrates, proteins and fats. The specific amount of each can be disputed by health professionals, and that could be a full article on its own, but the basic information that is important for healthy weight loss is to remember that food equals fuel which helps you maintain energy during your workouts. So taking in too little, or the wrong types may leave you short on energy, while taking in too much will lead to weight gain. Vegetables and fruit of course are the staple of any healthy diet and you should definitely shoot to target them for a fair amount of your consumption. Vegetables in particular are low in calories per volume and high in fiber while low in sugar. All are effective when targeting weight loss. Another key to healthy consumption is to switch from processed white flour and white rice to whole wheat or whole grain breads and brown rice or quinoa. You should also minimize alcohol consumption and eat lean meats in moderation.
Just as important is to change some of your lifestyle habits. You may find that when you get hungry you go to the cabinets and pull out a bag of potato chips, or a box of cheese crackers. These types of things should be removed from your cabinets and replaced in the snack department with healthy fruits or vegetables like apples, carrots or celery. If you suck down a bag of chips, which we all know is easy once they are in your hands, you may be taking in several hundred to over a thousand empty calories, while if you eat an apple or a cup of celery you are looking at 35-100 calories that are healthy and low in fat and dense in nutrients.
Lastly, exercise is key to your weight loss efforts and can help improve the aesthetics of your body and your overall health in areas like blood pressure and cholesterol. Exercise also is an important component of the calorie calculation and allows you to eat a little more food if you are hungry while still keeping your net calories at a level that will lead to weight loss. It can vary based on your weight, height and age, but walking for an hour for example will burn several hundred calories while jogging or riding a bike for the same amount of time will burn over a thousand calories.
Ultimately if you are one hundred pounds or more overweight, it is essential that you do something for your own good and the well being of your loved ones and family. If you carry on at the status quo it will eventually cause you serious health problems and likely an early death. The good news is that you have the power to change. By following the basic guidelines above you can and will lose weight. For more information on healthy weight loss or if you feel like you can use additional help please visit http://www.reshapethenation.com.
The author, Chris Powell, is an avid runner, biker, swimmer and soccer player and is a regular participant in marathons, triathlons and other fitness events. Exercise, health and nutrition became a hobby and love of his after realizing he had gained significant weight in his twenties and thirties after being an elite high school and college athlete. For information on healthy weight loss he recommends visiting http://www.reshapethenation.com.
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