# Diet and Weight Loss



## Enigmatic Nelly (Feb 2, 2010)

What is a good crash diet to lose 10 pounds in a fortnight? I need to attend my best friends marriage and want to look great in my outfit. Any suggestions?


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## MostlyWater (Feb 2, 2010)

My sister's friend only ate oatmeal for a month before she got married and she lost weight.


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## Selkie (Feb 2, 2010)

You could just go on ANY diet and take a natural diuretic, like cranberry juice. The first ten pounds of any diet is water weight anyway. It's that second ten pounds that's hard, because that is fat loss.


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## Enigmatic Nelly (Feb 3, 2010)

Thank you but I have tried oatmeals before and they really didn't give appreciable results. I have just got a fortnight to go for the wedding and I am really tense on how to lose weight sooner.Any other tips? how about skipping meals altogether and going on a juice diet?


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## roadfix (Feb 3, 2010)

Depending on your size you can lose several pounds of water weight on the day of the wedding by running several miles.  
Seriously, aerobic exercise alone is more effective than dieting.  You can even get away without ever changing your eating habits.


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## Alix (Feb 3, 2010)

Ditto what roadfix said. You have to exercise your fanny off. Literally. 

Good luck!


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## PrincessFiona60 (Feb 3, 2010)

There's no such thing as a "Good" crash diet and the Nurse in me hopes you don't try it.  Watch your portion sizes, exercise.  The only way to go.


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## Catseye (Feb 9, 2010)

roadfix said:


> Seriously, aerobic exercise alone is more effective than dieting. You can even get away without ever changing your eating habits.


 
There is only one way to lose fat. That is to burn more calories than you take in (eat). 

Here's what I recommend. First, figure out your Basal Metabolic Rate. This is a number that represents the calories your body burns in running its life-supporting processes: breathing, heartbeat, brain activity, cell growth, baby making, etc. What you would burn if you lay on a flat surface and didn't move a muscle. Here's the formula:

BMR = 655 + ( 4.35 x weight in pounds ) + ( 4.7 x height in inches ) - ( 4.7 x age in years )

So for example, using made-up numbers, a woman weighing 125 pounds, 5'5" tall and 30 years old, her BMR would be 1363. (655 + [4.35 x 125] + [4.7 x 65] - [4.7 x 30] = 1363)

If you eat exactly your BMR, you would neither gain nor lose weight. So the trick is to consume fewer calories than your BMR, see? However, and this is very important: Do not eat fewer than 1200 calories a day. Not only is it dangerous to your health, but -- of more immediate interest to you right now, I'm sure -- your body will go into starvation mode. That is, it will think it is being deprived and it will _retain fat_ to prevent itself from starving. 

It's never a good idea to drop below BMR for an extended length of time. You're borrowing trouble. But if you're young and reasonably healthy, probaby ten days won't do much harm. 

The above poster is correct; aerobic exercise will burn off fat. BUT, and this is also very important. For maximum effectiveness, you must aerobicize in a fasting state, i.e., first thing in the morning. Otherwise, your body will call on its glucose stores for energy to fuel the exercise, and the stored fat will remain untouched. (Its glucose comes from the food you ate.) You'd have to run or treadmill or whatever long enough to burn off the glucose before it turned to its fat stores, spinning your wheels, in effect. In a fasting state, your body draws directly on the fat, see? 

After exercise, _eat_, even if it's only a light meal. 

I recommend this regimen for a short time only. In the long run, radical loss dieting will result in lost muscle as well as lost fat, and the minute you stop the loss diet and start eating normally, you'll quickly regain the weight in _the form of fat_, and you'll be worse off than you were before -- that is, the fat will be back and the muscle will be lost. Ideally you want to lose fat at a rate of 1.5-2 pounds a week. That way you'll be losing unwanted fat and retaining your muscle. 

So if you lose the ten pounds in time for the wedding, congratulations. But then be sure to eat and exercise carefully to prevent the above from happening. And know too that if you lose the weight too fast, much of it will be water, anyway. And that weight comes back on _really_ fast.

Good luck.


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## srm (Mar 3, 2010)

there's more to it than calories in / calories out unfortunately... While you do need to keep calories in mind there are variety of other things to take in effect, one main one being insulin.  at the end of the day insulin is a storage hormone, try to limit your intake of foods that will spike your insulin levels. 

The easy stuff, start drinking only water.  get rid of soda / juices etc.. (even diet pop).  Good old H20 is what you want.   Your final meal of the day should be light, you dont want to store up on a bunch of carbs (energy) and then sit around and relax all night.  Your body will just store this energy for later use (fat).   get rid of white stuff, white pasta, white rice, white bread.  they've had all the value stripped out of it,  hit the whole grain stuff instead.   dont be affraid of all fat, we need fat, but chose the right ones (Omegas).  Almonds, Walnuts.. just dont go overboard on em.   

oatmeal is a great breakfast.  it digests slow, and provides energy all day... it'll help keep you full.   eat every few hours, to keep yourself from going hungry.  stop eating later in the evening.. i typically stop eating around 7pm... that works for me.


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## CookLikeJulia (Mar 9, 2010)

Easy to loss weight first and the most is eating veggies , i help you circulate and release unwanted calories and fats store in you body , try to eat vegetables everyday , you vowel moment will become good , you don't need to use any slimming tea just o have a bowel movement a day. Eating more meat make you fat .that's the reality .


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## PrincessFiona60 (Mar 10, 2010)

Heh!  DH was diagnosed with Type II Diabetes today (spent a long time in the doctor's office today) and now he HAS to listen to me about his eating habits.  AND his Diabetes Educator was my Nutrition instructor at college, I already know what she's going to tell him.


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## Robo410 (Mar 11, 2010)

Eat real food (not processed stuff) mostly plants, not too much.  You'll lose weight.


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## srm (Mar 12, 2010)

Robo410 said:


> Eat real food (not processed stuff) mostly plants, not too much.  You'll lose weight.



good book!


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## Andy M. (Mar 12, 2010)

Catseye said:


> There is only one way to lose fat. That is to burn more calories than you take in (eat).
> 
> Here's what I recommend. First, figure out your Basal Metabolic Rate. This is a number that represents the calories your body burns in running its life-supporting processes: breathing, heartbeat, brain activity, cell growth, baby making, etc. What you would burn if you lay on a flat surface and didn't move a muscle. Here's the formula:
> 
> ...



There *IS* only one way to lose weight, eat fewer calories than you use.  Everything else is a embellishment of that rule.

There is a much simpler way to calculate your BMR.  Multiply your body weight in pounds by 10.9.  That's your BMR.

The definition of BMR above is correct.  It's the number of calories your body burns to do all the things it does automatically.  

So if you eat only your BMR number of calories, you will lose weight because you don't lay perfectly still in bed all day.  Everything you do beyond that burns calories in addition to your BMR calories.

The basic formula says it all.  add fewer calories to your body than you burn up.  

You can do that two different ways:  

Add fewer calories (eat less)
Exercise (burn up more)

If you do either one, above and beyond what you are doing now, you'll lose weight.  If you do both, you'll lose weight much faster.


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