Losing weight in a healthy way requires discipline and persistence. You can maximize healthy weight loss by participating in an aggressive exercise program and significantly limiting your calorie intake while also providing your body with needed nutrients. It's likely you'll see more significant weight loss at the beginning of your regimen, with rate of weight loss slowing as you progress.
Losing Weight
It's important to first understand how weight loss occurs. Whenever you create a caloric deficit within your body, by burning more calories than you consume, your body must utilize the fat already stored on your body to fuel daily activities, which in turn causes you to lose body weight. Each 3,500-calorie deficit you create equates to a pound of fat loss. You create this caloric deficit by increasing the number of calories you burn by exercising regularly and decreasing you calorie intake by making proper eating and drinking choices.
Aggressive Exercise
The American Council on Exercise, or ACE, recommends completing at least 60 minutes of cardiovascular exercise on most days to lose a significant amount of weight. Cardiovascular exercise, which includes activities such as running, swimming and riding stationary exercise equipment, is the most effective activity for burning calories. You can maximize your 60-minute workouts even further by choosing cardiovascular activities that burn the most calories per minute. The Mayo Clinic lists running, rollerblading and jumping rope as three of the top calorie-burning activities.
Limiting Calories
Your workouts will be ineffective if you don't make adjustments to your nutritional habits. Eating the appropriate number of calories is essential for successful weight loss. Use an online calorie calculator to first estimate the number of calories that you need to maintain your current body weight. An online calculator finds this value based on your body weight and activity level. Once you have that value, subtract 500 from it to calculate the number of calories you should consume every day to lose weight. A 500-calorie daily deficit will amount to 3,500 calories fewer per week, a loss of one pound of body weight.
Increase Metabolic Rate
If you're looking to increase the rate of your healthy weight loss even further, incorporate short, but intense walks throughout your day. By adding 10- to 15-minute walks every few hours, you will not only be increasing the number of calories you burn while you're walking, but you'll also cause an increase in your resting metabolic rate throughout the day. This means after you're finished with your walk, you will be burning more calories while at rest.
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