Being overweight puts you at a higher risk for heart disease, high blood pressure, stroke and type 2 diabetes. To lose body fat, it's important to understand why and when your body sheds pounds and what you can do to set yourself up for success.
The Basics
When your body receives more calories from what you eat and drink than it burns over a period of time, your body stores the surplus of calories as body fat so that it can be used as fuel later. When your body burns more calories than it consumes, your body breaks down fat to use as fuel and you lose weight.
Deficit
For each pound of weight loss, you must create a deficit of about 3,500 calories. You do this over time, burning more than you consume a little bit every day, which eventually adds up to pounds of weight loss. A healthy weight loss rate is 1 to 2 pounds per week. By cutting 500 calories every day from the amount of calories you would need to eat to maintain your current weight will result in a single pound of weight loss per week.
Metabolism
Your resting metabolism, or how many calories your body burns while at rest, makes an enormous impact on weight loss success. Resting metabolism depends on your genetic makeup, body composition and activity level. If you have more lean muscle, your body is forced into providing the tissues with a constant stream of calories to maintain a healthy structure, increasing your overall resting metabolic rate. Regular physical activity, or getting cardiovascular workouts in on most days, also will increase your overall resting metabolism. Eating smaller meals more often teaches your body to use fuel immediately, burning more calories. If you eat larger, fewer meals, your body is constantly battling starvation and thus slows down metabolism to protect its energy storage.
Nutrition
What you eat and drink is the most important element of weight loss. Eating multigrain, high-fiber foods will provide necessary nutrients and energy, and also make you feel fuller longer. Drinking water keeps your body stay hydrated and doesn't add to your overall calorie total. On the other hand, eating high-fat, high-calorie foods and drinking beverages such as soda and alcohol will quickly put you over the daily total necessary to lose weight.
Exercise
It's possible to lose weight by cutting calories alone, but those who implement regular exercise regimens burn more calories every day and are likely to see more significant weight loss. Plus, exercising will typically make you more motivated to stick with your nutritional plan as you burn more calories every day. The activity that you choose to do and the intensity at which you do it will determine how many calories you burn. Running and swimming burn more calories than walking and bowling. Weight training regularly will cause you to increase your lean muscle mass and, as stated above, will result in a raised metabolic rate.
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