If your New Year's resolution involves losing 20 or more pounds, it's never too early to start pondering the best plan of action for success. Unfortunately, many people turn to dangerous weight loss pills or fad diets to lose weight quickly. Come January, if your goal is to lose pounds, there are multiple ways that you can lose the weight, while staying healthy at the same time.
Realistic Goals
Before starting in on a weight-loss program, it's important to set realistic expectations and goals. Many resolutions end unsuccessfully because participants set goals that are admirable, but hard to achieve. Instead of focusing on losing 20 pounds all at once, you can set a smaller goal of losing only 1 or 2 pounds a week. This means burning 3,500 to 7,000 calories a week through a mixture of diet and exercise. According to the Mayo Clinic, losing weight slowly is not only more healthy for your body, but it also gives you a better chance of keeping it off. By losing 1 or 2 pounds a week, you can still healthfully reach your goals in as little as 10 weeks.
Food Journal
Another tool for helping you lose 20 or more pounds is to keep a food journal. Food journals force you to look at your eating habits and give you a visual tool on how to change your lifestyle. Many online tools are now available to help you keep track of your food intake. One example of a helpful online tool is My Daily Plate. My Daily Plate not only allows you to keep track of what you eat, but it also breaks down your meals into their basic components, including sodium, cholesterol, fat and calories.
Physical Activity
According to the American College of Sports Medicine, as well as the American Heart Association, everyone should aim for at least 30 minutes of exercise, five days a week. Exercise can be a simple as going for a walk, swim, hike or anything that raises your heart rate. Part of your exercise routine should also include strength training, which can be done using weights or by using the weight resistance of your body (such as with push-ups). When trying to lose 1 or 2 pounds a week, you should aim to burn at least 300 to 500 calories a day, five days a week. If this is difficult to achieve all at once, you can break your exercise sessions up into two or more different times during the day.
Diet
Diet is also an important aspect of reaching your 20-pound goal. Depending on your age, height, weight and activity level, the number of calories you will need to remove from your regular diet will vary. In general, for the average person to lose 1 or 2 pounds a week, you will need to cut approximately 500 calories from your diet daily. An exact individual calorie goal can be obtained through using a complex set of mathematical equations. Luckily, thanks to modern calorie goal calculators, all you need to do is input your basic information, and a calorie goal calculator can give you individualized results for your daily calorie limits. A link to a reliable calculator is provided in the Resources section of this article.
Support System
A final important way to help you lose 20 pounds is to get your friends and family involved. This may be going for a walk together, planning an outdoor activity together or joining a community or intramural sports team. Other support systems may include weight-loss organizations, such as Weight Watchers, which provide education and support groups for those looking for ways to lose the extra pounds.
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