How to Lose Weight Fast - Success Tips

For the majority of people losing weight is an ongoing struggle. You might find some success with a particular diet or weight loss plan, but as soon go back to a "normal" life, the weight creeps back on. This is an all too familiar scenario for most people and the challenge of losing weight is to not only take off pounds, but to keep the weight off.

Not all diet tips and weight loss plans are realistic, are you prepared to eat nothing but grapefruit for weeks on end? And what happens when you decide to eat something else? This is the cycle most of us have fallen into and it creates the yo-yo effect, making it even harder to lose weight.

The big news recently is the dangers of carrying excess belly fat, but many people don't even know how to lose belly fat, they think there's some magic pill or potion that will give them the flat stomach they've been longing for. I'm sorry to be the one to tell you, there's no quick fix, losing belly fat is no different than any other plan designed to show you how to lose weight. You need to change what you eat and what you do. It's that simple.

Every pound of weight you carry is equivalent to 3,500 calories. It doesn't make any difference how much weight you need to lose, the best way to lose weight is to start figuring out how many calories you body needs just to maintain its current weight. Once you know how many calories your body requires, you'll be able to calculate how quickly you want to lose the weight. Let's get started.

There are three things that will factor in to the number of calories your body needs. These are BMR, or Basic Metabolic Rate; physical activity, how active you are; and the thermic effect of food, this is the energy your body requires to digest the food you consume.

The first item, BMR is fairly easy to calculate. This is the number of calories or units of energy your body burns while at rest. Your Basic Metabolic Rate will include the calories used to accomplish the necessary functions like pumping your heart, stabilizing temperature and working your lungs. All of these activities require energy or fuel for your body to perform. The amount of fuel, or calories used through BMR is approximately 60 to 70 percent of the total number of calories your body will need in a day.

A standard and accepted formula for calculating BMR is the Harris-Benedict formula:

Adult male:
66 + (6.3 x body weight in pounds) + (12.9 x height in inches) - (6.8 x age in years)

Adult female:
655 + (4.3 x weight in pounds) + (4.7 x height in inches) - (4.7 x age in years)

You can easily use this formula to calculate the number of calories your body will require for BMR.

The next factor impacting the calories you'll need is physical activity. Everything you do will require fuel for your body. It's not just exercise that burns calories, getting dressed, washing your face or attending an aerobics class; they all will require fuel, or calories for your body to burn. The more physical activity you engage in, the more calories you'll burn in a day and the more calories your body will require.

The last item that comes into play is the thermic effect of food. Your body uses energy to digest food and break it down into usable elements. This energy is known as the thermic effect of food and is calculated by multiplying the total calories consumed by 10%, so basically, 10% of all calories consumed are used in digestion. Some foods will take longer to digest, making their thermic effect a little higher.

We can now take a look at the total number of calories your body will need in a day. By calculating your BMR, physical activity and the thermic effect of the food you eat, you'll have a very good idea of the number of calories your body needs. Now, if you want to lose weight, you know that you will need to give your body fewer calories than it requires; this will result in your body turning to stored fat for its source of fuel.

If you calculate that your body requires 2,200 calories just to maintain your current weight and you want to lose 5 pounds, the calculation will look like this. Remember each pound is equivalent to 3,500 calories, so a weight loss of 5 pounds would be 17,500 calories (3,500 x 5lbs.). This might seem like a lot of calories to eliminate, but it's not nearly as impossible as it looks.

Since we figured you would need 2,200 calories each day, let's take things easy and assume you will shave off a measly 500 calories. This is easily done by foregoing a couple of treats or opting for a healthy lunch over that Big Mac. You'll find it relatively easy to find 500 calories you can do away with. So, if you create a calorie deficit of 500 calories per day, it will take you one week to lose a pound, or five weeks to lose 5 pounds.

Do you want to lose weight even faster? That's easy. You can double your rate of weight loss by doubling your caloric deficit. You've eliminated 500 calories from your diet, but what about burning a few extra calories each day. Maybe you'll take up a sport and join an exercise class. If you burn 500 more calories each day you will double your weight loss efforts. Now you'll lose those 5 pounds in just over 2 weeks! Play with the numbers and you can figure out where you want to be and how quickly you want to lose the weight. Remember, a healthy weight loss is considered between two and three pounds per week.