What Is The Best Way To Lose 20 Pounds?

Excess weight comes from lifestyle choices you've been making for some period of time. However, other factors, including baby-weight from a pregnancy, physical limitations and disabilities, disabling surgery or injury, metabolic issues and medication, may also contribute to the accumulation of extra weight. For most people, the most effective way to lose weight is to eat a low-calorie, nutritionally-balanced diet and increase your level of physical activity, according to the National Institutes of Health.

New Life Style

The healthiest way to lose weight and keep it off is to lose 1 or 2 lbs per week, according to the National Institutes of Health. When you lose a lot of weight quickly, you are possibly losing water weight or lean tissue rather than fat, suggests Donald Hensrud, M.D., from the Mayo Clinic. Hensrud also notes that the extraordinary effort and sacrifice involved in crash diets is difficult to sustain, so people often regain the weight. Instead of yo-yo dieting, make permanent changes in your eating and exercise patterns.

Weight Loss Math

To lose 1 lb. of weight, you need to eliminate 3,500 calories, either by reducing your caloric intake or by increasing the calories you burn through activity or both. If you want to lose 1 lb. per week, you need to excise 3, 500 calories divided by 7 days of the week, yielding 500 calories per day. To lose 2 lbs. per week, eliminate 1,000 calories per day by some combination of reducing calories and increasing activity.

Eat Fewer Calories

Examine your diet and eliminate food that carries extra calories. First, cut out food that offers calories but little nutrition, including chips, crackers, sugar, candy, ice cream and pastries. Reduce processed, fatty, fried and starchy food to a bare minimum. Replace white bread, white rice and processed pasta with whole grain bread, brown rice and whole-grain pasta. Replace high-calorie beverages such as full-sugar soda, fruit juice and power drinks with water, coffee or tea, and replace whole milk with non-fat milk. Reduce cheese, butter, margarine, cream sauces and heavy oils to a minimum, and only eat lean meats, such as skinless chicken and turkey breast.

Vegetables provide vitamins, minerals and phytonutrients, but carry few calories. They are high in fiber, which fills you up and prolongs digestion, staving your appetite. Fill at least 1/3 of your plate with vegetables and eat salads routinely.

Exercise and Be More Active

Increase your activity level. Ideally, to optimize weight loss, you should do 60 to 90 minutes of moderately intense aerobic exercise on a daily basis, according to the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases. If that is too much for you, any increase in activity over what you do now will burn calories and help you reach your 20 lb weight loss. Exercise that causes you to breathe deeply and increases your heart rate burns the most calories. Still, if you can't run, walk fast, and if you can't walk fast, then walk at whatever pace you can. Likewise, if you can't spare 60 to 90 minutes, then squeeze in a couple of 15 minute walks. A 170-lb person who walks 30 minutes at a moderate pace burns about 134 calories, which amounts to a loss of about 1 lb after a month of 30-minute walks. That may not seem like much, but the accumulative effects help you lose weight and keep it off.

Monitor Your Progress

Monitor your weight loss. After a week of eating less and exercising more, you should have dropped a pound or two. If not, then review your diet and your exercise patterns. Identify further calories to excise from your diet or increase the intensity or duration of your exercise.