Guest post by Tony College
The long winter is over and all the excuses for staying inside are gone! Summertime is a great opportunity to get ahead on your fitness goals. You may have the intention of losing weight this summer – 5,10, maybe 20 pounds. Have you developed a plan on how you will lose this weight?
“He who fails to plan is planning to fail” as Winston Churchill famously said years ago. If you want to take advantage of the weather to lose some pounds, develop a plan to do so! Below are three plans that you can use, mix together, and modify to get in shape this summer.
Plan to Lose 12 Pounds
To lose weight, your body needs to have a constant calorie deficit. That is common knowledge, but can’t be overlooked. Basically, you need to burn more calories than you consume. If you want to lose 2 pounds per week, you’ll have to burn about 7,000 more calories per week than you normally do (one pound = approx. 3500 calories). That would be a pretty large goal to aim for, cutting back about 1,000 calories per day (1,000X 7 days = 7,000 calories). Something a little more realistic would be to aim for losing one pound of per week. To do this, you’ll need to cut about 3500 calories in a week, which is 500 calories per day.
The first thing you’ll want to do is to find out how many calories you eat per day to sustain your current weight. Once you figure that out, cut the number back by 500. Whether you cut the number back 500 by eating less, exercising more, or a combination of both, you’ll be sure to see the results. Since there is about 12 weeks in the summer, this plan can help you lose around 12 pounds during the summer season.
An Exercise Focused Plan
Changing your diet is the fasted way to lose weight, but for maintained results, it’s smart to incorporate exercise. Exercise will help build your muscle too, which can increase your metabolic rate, which will naturally burn more calories for you.
Creating a calorie deficit is what we are aiming for, so here are some calorie-burning exercise options:
To the right of them is the estimated calorie loss for a 160lb person doing the exercise for 30 minutes:
Jogging 5.2 mph (11.5 min mile) – 306 calories
Moderate Walking – 112 calories
Mowing the lawn – 187 calories
Fast ballroom dancing – 187 calories
Light bicycling – 204 calories
Playing basketball – 272 calories
(info from myfitnesspal.com/exercise/lookup)
You could choose to do one of these exercise in the morning 3 times a week. Along with eating breakfast each day and deciding not to eat after 9pm, you have a simple fitness plan with a lot of potential.
Remember, creating a calorie deficit is what we are looking for, so every little bit counts.
A Diet Focused Plan
The easiest way to cut back on calories, is obviously to put less calories in your body. Cutting out some junk food can made a world of difference in our diet. When you eating 9 Chips Ahoy cookies, your taking in 480 calories! It’s easy to binge, grabbing a box of cookies, a tall of glass of milk, and watch TV in the evenings, but it’s not worth it.
If losing weight is your goal and junk food is an obstacle, it is an enemy. So, treat it like an enemy. Until you perceive something as your enemy, you wont treat it like your enemy. It may be a good idea for you to through away all your junk food and resolve to replace it with healthy snacks. Doing something that simple can benefit your weight loss endeavors so much.
Eating breakfast is a must if you want to get in shape. Not only will breakfast help keep you stay full throughout the day preventing unhealthy snacking, breakfast will help get your metabolism working in the morning.
A simple diet tip that I write about a lot is probably the cheapest and easiest thing that you can do to lose weight. Here it is: Drink 2 glasses of water before each time you eat. This can help suppress your hunger, causing you to eat less. It’s said that a lot of times when you feel hungry, you’re actually thirsty. Drinking before each time you eat will help you discern whether you are truly hungry or not. Doing this can also assist with digestion.
Use the nice whether to your advantage this summer! Even if you’re not going to use one of the plans above, make sure you follow some sort of fitness training plan to help you keep on track.
This article was written by Tony College from LoseWeightandBeHealthy.net. Lose Weight and Be Healthy encourages, educates, and equips their readers to live a healthy lifestyle.
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