<p>Has anyone tried any diets that have worked?</p>
<p>I lost 50 lbs.</p>
<p>Find out what your daily caloric need is. If you are overweight and eating 3,000 calories right now to maintain the weight you have, if you cut 500 calories a day, you will lose one pound a week (there are 3,500 calories in one pound). You can cut 500 calories a day through cardio exercise or simply by restricting what you eat. </p>
<p>But keep in mind that a pound can be comprised of muscle, water, or fat. You want to lose the most amount of fat with the least amount of muscle because the more muscle you have, the higher your metabolic rate. Thus, WHAT you eat becomes a major factor. </p>
<p>Eat good fats (poly and mono) that are found in nuts and olive oil. Stay away from saturated fats, trans fat, and anything with hydrogenated oils in them. Have a lot of protein. Boycott white bread and ONLY have WHOLE grain/wheat bread. Have fat-free milk, yogurt, and cheese daily--the calcium turns off your body's readibility to store fat. Sprinkle cinnoman on your food since it helps regulate your insulin levels. If you're a chocoholic like me, have piece of DARK choclate every day if you want. Just stay within your caloric limit.</p>
<p>When doing cardio (stationary bike, running, etc.) do it SLOWLY. This way you'll burn the most calories from fat. If you increase your rate, then you'll most likely be burning carbs and muscle. </p>
<p>You burn the most fat while you're sleeping so do your cardio before bed. Don't eat before bed. And get a good nights rest.</p>
<p>And finally, don't buy into any diets. Trust me, I've tried them all. They all suck and you'll never follow them...except maybe weight watchers. Don't get sucked into the low carb craze, especially. The transition period when you switch back to a carb-rich diet will reak havoc on your body and you'll gain back a LOT of fat.</p>
<p>wow very proffessional there!
Yeah go with thisisbanans's plan.
I havent really tried dieting but I heard that you shouldn't eat 1.5 hours before you go to sleep, and you should go walking instead of running because if you go running, you burn something else or something.. Walking is better than running for dieting people.. yeah :)</p>
<p>drink a lot of water.
veggies are also really good.. but try to cut down on the fruit, which has a lot of (good) sugars, but give you only instant energy... then the excess is stored as fat.. it's great for the morning though.</p>
<p>Ok... Dr. thisSHHHisBANANAs... ;)</p>
<p>:)</p>
<p>Run in sweats ... you sweat like no other but you lose weight. Of course I run track so running is no prob for me. If you dont like running you could take hydroxycut and workout in a gym but a lot of ppl dont like pills. lol I really dont know</p>
<p>when doing cardio at the gym you could try doing it in sprints, 2min at a medium level speed, and then 30-45secs at top notch, and then back to the 2min .. etcetcetc ( do it up to 10-15min) this way you will burn much more fat and prevent the loss of muscle tissue. check out <a href="http://www.menshealth.com%5B/url%5D">www.menshealth.com</a>, it has great tips on weightloss/muscle gain</p>
<p>terrybhs06: sweating a lot will make you lose weight, but only because you're becoming dehydrated, not because you're burning fat.</p>
<p>The idea of using sweats is wrong -- you just lose water. Nothing good there.</p>
<p>Megaman makes a good point, there's a concept called HIIT -- it involves cycling between top notch and medium speeds on a treadmill or other cardio machine, for short amounts of time, maybe 15 to 20 minutes.</p>
<p>What you need to do to lose weight is:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Exercise, no matter what you have to. This idea of just changing what you eat wont be as effective if you dont also exercise, I'd actually say it's idiotic. Either go for long periods of time (over 30 minutes) on a cardio machine OR do HIIT. You can search google for more information about HIIT.</p></li>
<li><p>Adjust diet, try cutting calories. If you drink soda try to drink water and diet drinks instead. Look at calories, those juices you buy are usually LOADED with sugar. You have to start being more conscious about these things. Cut down on bread somewhat, you dont have to do it totally but you know, eat wheat bread and whatnot over white bread.</p></li>
<li><p>Watch things like Fat, Bananas talks about Olive oil and nuts, those are good ideas. You want to up your protein intake too, eat things like lean meats (chicken, lean beef, cottage cheese, fish, etc). </p></li>
<li><p>Try to incorporate some sort of weight training after your cardio, as your body gains muscle it will burn calories better.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>You've gotta be pretty committed to this sort of thing, exercise is a MUST, its probably more important than dieting.</p>
<p>simple math: burn more calories than you take in.
my tricks (and i consider myself an expert: ive managed to lose and keep off 30 pounds since graduating from high school 6 years ago...i've been a size 0 for several years): watch your fat intake, dont eat after 7pm, have some form of continuous exercise at least 20 minutes a day (i find just walking briskly is good enough- i hate running), eat several small meals throughout the day to keep up your metabolism.</p>
<p>dont try to lose a large amount of weight at once- it will be mostly water eight and will come back rather quickly and you will totally screw up your metabolism- you shouldnt be losing more than 2 pounds a week.</p>
<p>and please please please dont take diet pills- they are dangerous, and if they really worked, obesity wouldnt be such a problem in this country.</p>
<p>I used to be 5' 1" and 130-140 pounds... now I'm 6' 0" and 160 pounds</p>
<p>to keep off weight:</p>
<p>Cardio/aerobic exercise for at least 30 minutes.</p>
<p>Even though you burn through your glucose and glycogen stores as well as some of the protein you eat, your rate of metabolism and energy comsumption increase dramatically for the next 12 hours provided you're resting the entire time.</p>
<p>And since the body primarily uses fat as its energy source during periods of low activity, your rate of fat consumption increases during the 12 hours.</p>
<p>How much faster you burn the fat during this phase depends on how intense the aerobic exercise was. In higher aerobic exercise/borderline anaerobic, your body burns fat afterwards like a fire burns gasoline.</p>
<p>ThisSHHHisBananas - I have to disagree with you on the low carb "craze". Both my parents as well as myself have done Atkins successfully without gaining back any weight.</p>
<p>My dad lost 60 pounds in 8 months, my mom lost 22 pounds in 3 months, and in 4.5 weeks of doing Atkins, I've lost 12 pounds. Neither my mom or dad has gained their weight back and I don't plan to either.</p>
<p>The thing about the Atkins diet is that it never really ends. The mistake people make that makes them gain back weight is going back to a "normal" or "healthy" diet after they think they're done. People who have had success with Atkins know that carbs are what made them fat in the first place. So why put empty carbs back in your system?</p>
<p>When you get off Atkins, you have to make the conscious effort to eat only natural carbs. If you've heard of the glycemic index, you'll know what I'm talking about. You are to avoid white flour and refined sugar for the rest of your life. Fruit and whole grain bread can be added into your diet once you're in the lifetime maintenance phase of your weight loss. You take it week by week, adding 5 carbs per week to your daily intake and you find your CCLM - critical carbohydrate level for maintenance. This is usually between 60 and 70 per day for most people. This sounds like not very much, but 70 carbs gives you a LOT of liberty in what you eat. You can have fruit, whole grain bread, nuts, milk, etc...things that were prohibited in the first few weeks of your Atkins diet.</p>
<p>The other fantastic thing about low carb diets is that you almost never experience "hunger" like you're used to. First of all, you're hungry less often because the food you eat is digested slower (meat and vegetables) as opposed to carbs that are digested very quickly. And second of all, when you really are hungry, it's a different feeling than what you're used to. It's weird at first, you think you have a stomachache, but then you learn that this feeling means it's time to eat. After about a week, I never had cravings for anything carbish. I'd rather have cheese, meat, or a lowcarb fruit like raspberries, strawberries, watermelon, pineapple or peach. (bananas, apples, oranges and pears have considerably more carbs, between 25 and 30 each where berries, watermelon, and pineapple have about 3 carbs per 1/2 cup and a peach is about 8 carbs).</p>
<p>I HIGHLY recommend Atkins because after several other failed attempts to lose roughly 30-40 pounds, this is by far and wide the easiest diet to do because cravings are eliminated naturally right off the bat.</p>
<p>Atkins is ok if </p>
<ol>
<li>You intend on staying with low carb</li>
<li>You're too lazy to go and work out.</li>
</ol>
<p>both of those are SO true.</p>
<p>you dont have to stay with low carb so much as good carb. to keep the weight off you will have to treat white bread and cake as sparingly as possible. </p>
<p>and its true that you will lose weight without exercise. i did a lot of exercise hte first 2 weeks but then school started so i really couldn't and i'm losing at the same rate as i was before.</p>