In order to lose weight, you must consume fewer calories than you burn over a period of time. Every pound of fat loss requires a caloric deficit of 3,500. Although there are numerous over-the-counter diet pills and quick fat-loss diets, the most power system for losing weight is to create the caloric deficit through aggressive exercise and healthy eating.
Permanent Weight Loss
The most powerful, permanent and safe way to lose weight is to participate in an aggressive, frequent exercise program and to strictly monitor your calorie intake. By incorporating exercise and healthy eating habits into your routine, you learn healthy lifelong habits that you can continue to practice even after you've reached your weight-loss goals. This way, instead of becoming dependent on the effects of diet pills or unhealthy eating patterns, you lose a significant amount of weight and make it more likely that you will keep it off over the long term.
Exercise
To lose a significant amount of weight in a safe and permanent way, the American Council on Exercise recommends getting about 60 minutes of cardiovascular exercise on most days of the week. Calorie-burning cardiovascular activities include jogging, using an elliptical machine or swimming. If you're unable to complete an entire 60-minute session at a time, you can still effectively burn calories by splitting the workout time into shorter exercise bouts -- for example, 30 minutes of one type of activity in the morning and another 30 minutes of a different activity in the evening.
Nutrition
Lose a significant amount of weight by calculating how many calories you burn every day and then consuming less than that value. Use an online calorie calculator that uses your current body weight and normal daily activity levels to estimate the number of calories you burn daily (see Resources). Then, monitor your daily calorie intake and make adjustments as necessary so that you're consuming 250 to 500 fewer calories than that value per day. Cutting out 500 calories creates a 3,500-calorie deficit, and thus a pound of fat loss per week using your nutritional adjustments alone.
Considerations
Because diet pills are not regulated by the Food and Drug Administration, or FDA, both diet pills and unrealistic diets can potentially be dangerous because they cause you to become dehydrated or to not consume enough calories to adequately fuel your brain, notes MayoClinic.com. The pills and diets that cause you to lose weight quickly usually do so by making you lose water weight, which is only a temporary result and can be dangerous.
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