To Diet or Not To Diet - A Weight Loss Question

Dieting to lose weight is like learning - there are no shortcuts. It takes time, but it will come, bit by bit, ounce by ounce.

The best way to diet is to diet healthily, and this means ensuring you get all the necessary nutrients your body needs - carbohydrates, fats, minerals, protein, vitamins and water. And the easiest way to ensure this is to eat a varied diet... in moderation.

Losing, or gaining weight is all a question of calories. Dieting to lose weight means controlling your calorie intake, so that your body uses more calories than it needs to maintain its present weight.

One pound of body weight is equal to 3500 calories. So to lose a pound you've got to have a calorie-deficit of 3500 calories; and you achieve this by reducing the amount of calories you take in by eating, or by increasing the amount of calories you expend with exercise.

And there is your choice: Diet... or exercise. Or both!

The number of calories your body consumes daily depends on a number of factors, and will be different from that of other people, but 2,000 calories is a rough average of what a person eats in a day, remembering that height, weight, age, gender and activity level all affect your personal caloric needs.

The three main factors that determine your body's needs are:

1. Your BMR - basal metabolic rate is the amount of energy your body needs to function at rest. Energy required to keep the heart beating, lungs breathing etc. In general, men have a higher BMR than women.
   
2. Physical activity - the amount of energy you expend in movement. This includes all your daily activities. The number of calories you burn however, depends on your body weight.
3. The "thermic" effect of food - it takes energy for your body to digest food, and some foods digest more easily than others.

The total number of calories you need, is the sum of these three factors.

Assuming you are a normal , relatively healthy person who just wants to lose weight, then any diet that maintains a good nutritional balance is going to give you results. There are enough to choose from, and it's just a question of personal taste. The only real requirement to make it successful though, is that you stick with it. Here's a few tips to think about:

• Keep at it : This is not just a break in your old eating habits, it's the creation of a whole new habit. And with practice it will replace the old habit permanently, ensuring the weight stays off.
  

• Give it time: if it's taken you years to put on the weight, don't expect to be able to lose it in a month. Give yourself a year to start off with. This may sound like a long time, but if you give up on the diet, or don't diet, that year will pass and you won't be any further. Blaming it on the diet and looking for another one is not going to help either.
• Focus on the activity, not on the scales: "weight watching"... is a little like watching water boil, or paint dry - it seems to take forever. You need to just continue with your normal life and let the diet do its work, ounce by ounce, pound by pound, day by day. Keep your focus on your new eating habit and its health benefits.

Don't let dieting be just the desperate desire to lose weight as quickly as possible - change your life with it. Here are some of the most popular healthy diets you can choose from:

1. Atkins
2. The Zone
3. Vegetarian and Vegan
4. Weight Watchers
5. Raw Food
6. Mediterranean
7. South Beach

You can find more info on these diets here.

Of course you don't have to change your eating habits at all - you can just move more. This doesn't have to be an organized activity like taking up a new sport - there are probably ways to increase your energy output within your normal daily routines. For example - use your car less, walk more, don't shy away from heavier activities, do your chores a little more energetically.

If that doesn't burn any extra calories then you have to add some new activities. Here are a few "weight loss" activities to consider:

• Step Aerobics... Targets legs, hips and buttocks - and burns 800 calories an hour.
• Bicycling... Burns 500 to 1,000 calories an hour depending on your speed and effort - mountain or hill biking is most effective.
• Swimming... Up and down the pool for an hour will burn off 800 calories, and will tone up most of your body.
• Racquetball... 800 calories an hour.
• Rowing... up to 600 calories an hour.
• Horse riding... 200 to 600 an hour, (horse lifting and horse chasing are even better at burning calories, but there's no need to overdo it, is there?).
• Dancing... 800 calories an hour having this much fun. Just put your favorite music on and start jumping around.
• Walking... what can be easier than this? A brisk walk can burn of 360 calories in an hour, and Hill-walking is even better.

Just as the flap of a butterfly wing can affect events on the other side of the world, so can a small but permanent alteration in your lifestyle result in you losing your excess weight. It doesn't have to happen fast, and it doesn't have to happen immediately - but changing a part of your daily eating routine, cutting out a few hundred calories a week, and increasing the energy output of your body with a little extra, regular exercise, will all ensure that you lose that weight forever.

Success.

 The Wild Food Weight Loss Diet - Red Berries to Roadkill