Answer Fitness®: Practical Fitness Advice for Everyone

How Can I Lose Weight In A Day Or Two? | Ask The Fitness Nerd

Is It Possible To Really Lose Weight In Just A Day Or Two? More Importantly, Is It Safe?

Hey Fitness Nerd,

I’m leaving on Monday morning for a vacation to the Bahamas. I’ve been working out like a fiend since the end of December, lots of cardio and I’ve really cut back how much I’m eating.  I’ve managed to lose a fair amount of weight so far. About 12 lbs. The problem is that I really need to lose another five to get into the shape I want for the beach.  I have less than four days left, how can I lose some more weight in just another day or two? I’m desperate and time is running out on me. — Jenna  (Dallas, Texas.)

Jenna, you’re probably not going to like my answer, but I’m going to shoot straight with you: You can lose some additional weight a day or two before your vacation, but more than likely, you’ll put it back on the first day in the Bahamas.

Why?

Because at this point, any scale weight you lose through additional exercise or restriction of food will probably be the result of lost water and less food in your digestive tract, and not real fat loss. Body fat percentage and not scale weight is always your best gauge of progress and body composition. Losing weight per se shouldn’t be your focus.

Remember, you lose fat over weeks — not days — regardless of what the fad and crash diet marketers say. And losing body fat is really what makes for a great looking physique at the beach — not what some numbers on a bathroom scale say.

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How Many Calories Should I Eat To Lose Weight? | Ask The Fitness Nerd

Looking to lose weight, but not sure how many calories you should eat to achieve your goal? It’s actually not that hard if you know what to do.

Dear Fitness Nerd,

My New Year’s Resolution this year is to lose some weight. Not a lot — about 10-15 lbs. I don’t want to try diet pills or any thing like that. I’d prefer to do it by getting my diet in order, believe it or not. However, I am a little unclear on how I should determine how many calories I should eat to lose weight. I know I’m not supposed to go under 1,000 calories, but how many should I eat? Can you help? Thanks!  –Madison H. (San Jose, CA.)

Great question, Madison. How many calories you should eat to maintain, gain or lose weight is one of those fitness and nutrition fundamentals that is pretty easy to figure out, once you know how to go at it.

The simple answer is that most females can lose weight by reducing their calories to around 1500 a day and males, to around 2000 calories a day. 

But this isn’t a very scientific, nor particularly effective, method of determining how many calories you should eat each day to lose weight. Taking a “one-size-fits-all” approach doesn’t take into account a person’s weight, height, age and activity levels which can all impact how many calories you should eat each day. And taking this approach can also cost you muscle, which you always want to try to spare.

A much better approach is to calculate your own specific calorie requirements, and use that to determine how many calories you should consume to lose weight.

Calorie In, Calorie Out: The Key To Weight Loss

While there are all kind of theories out there about tactics to lose weight that don’t necessarily involve calorie-counting (for example, changing your carbohydrate, protein and fat intake ratios like on the South Beach or Ketogenic diets), at the end of the day, the best place to always start is with calorie-in, calorie-out. 

Yes, changing your macro-nutrient mix can help for some people, but this violates the 80-20 rule: Focus 80% of your effort on the 20% of tactics that get you the best results. Once you’ve done that, you can try other approaches to shave off those last few pounds. For most people, controlling how many calories they eat will produce 80% of their weight loss results.

The good news is that figuring out how many calories you should eat to lose weight isn’t terribly hard — all you’ll need is bathroom scale, a pen, piece of paper and a connection to the Internet. By the time you are done, you’ll have a pretty good idea of exactly how many calories you should be eating each day to hit your weight loss and fat loss goals.

However, before we get started, it’s important to understand a couple of terms, including what a calorie is, something called your Basal Metabolic Rate (or BMR or “resting metabolic rate”)  and your Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE.) This will help you make more sense of the discussion going forward.

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What Are MUFAs? | Ask the Fitness Nerd

What’s a MUFA? The Fitness Nerd explains what this funny acronym means and why MUFAs are suddenly the rage among dieters.

Dear Fitness Nerd:

What are MUFAs? I keep hearing people talk about them, but I still haven’t quite figured out what they are. I know they are a type of fat, but I thought fats were unhealthy and should be avoided. Are they a supplement of some type like CLA? - Kayla R, (West Hollywood, CA)

MUFAs are an acronym for a “monounsaturated fatty acids” — a class of healthy fats found in foods like nuts and seeds, avocados, olives and certain vegetable oils. MUFAs are not typically taken as a supplement (as Conjugated linoleic acid or CLA often is), since they are plentiful in foods. 

MUFAs have gotten a lot of attention recently for three reasons:

1. MUFAs may help you lose weight.

There is some evidence that people who regularly consume MUFAs have lower body fat levels and are more successful at dropping body fat and weight than people who are on low-fat, carbohydrate rich diets.

This research flies in the face of  the conventional-wisdom that drove the low-fat craze of the 80s and 90s, which advised people to reduce their fat consumption as much as possible in order to lose weight, lower cholesterol and reduce the risk of stroke, high-blood pressure and heart disease. The latest research actually suggests that diets which are higher in healthy fats like MUFAs may be more effective at weight-control than low-fat diets.

2. MUFAs may reduce the risk of disease.

A growing body of research shows that MUFAs may not only help people lose fat, but that they also have protective properties that may lower the risk of developing certain diseases, including Type II Diabetes, heart disease, stroke and possibly certain types of cancers. MUFAs are also part of The Portfolio Diet, which is an approach to eating that combines MUFAs with other cholesterol-lowering foods like soy, plant sterols and soluble fiber from things like oatmeal and may reduce blood cholesterol-levels as effectively as prescription statin drugs.

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Clean Eating: Why Eating Clean Is The Unfad Diet That Works

Clean Eating Isn’t a Fad Diet …. It’s The Real Deal. Learn the Basics of Eating Clean and Reap The Health, Weight-Loss and Fitness Rewards.

At any given time, more than two-thirds of Americans are “on a diet.” Yet only 5 percent will experience lasting weight or fat loss.  We’re a nation on a perpetual diet, yet America continues to lead the world in obesity, heart disease, Type II diabetes and metabolic syndrome — a combination of risk factors that predispose people to developing heart disease, stroke and diabetes.

Here’s the irony: Even though American’s are “dieting” more, we’re getting fatter each day.  

Enter “Clean Eating” — a simple, common-sense approach to diet and nutrition that ditches the complicated menu plans of dieting gurus; avoids the single-food focus of the worst fad diets; eschews the loopy pseudo-scientific underpinnings of “Detox Diets” and instead emphasizes sensible, nutritious eating.

In other words, follow this approach and you’ll be less hungry, more satisfied, healthier, and slimmer … for good.

Clean Eating is the ultimate “un-fad” diet. And once you get the hang of it, you’ll never be able to imagine that you thought eating cabbage soup everyday was the key to getting lean.

The Origins of Clean Eating

The concept of “clean eating” isn’t new.

While it’s a phrase you’ll hear tossed around a lot by bodybuilders, athletes and fitness models, the Clean Eating philosophy has its original roots not in the bodybuilding and fitness communities, but rather in the co-op-shopping-Birkenstock-and-granola-crowd.

That’s right, thousands of buff beach bodies can thank tofu-eating, Deadheads for helping them shape better abs, drop body fat and improve their cholesterol profile to boot.  

The Clean Eating philosophy is really based on the natural health food movement of the 1960s, which then got transformed into the “whole foods” approach to eating, which emphasizes consuming foods (preferably organic) that are unprocessed or refined as little as possible before consumption. 

Canadian fitness model and author Tosca Reno is often credited with popularizing this approach to eating with her series of Clean Eating cookbooks, but the basics of this diet have been around for decades. Fitness trainer, natural bodybuilder and Burn the Fat, Feed The Muscle author Tom Venuto has been talking about “eating clean” for years, and makes it a central part of his fat-loss and muscle gain plan. 

At it’s root, the diet is so common-sense and back-to-basics, that no one really can take credit for developing this approach to diet and nutrition. 

In fact, all of the recipes and nutrition articles on Answer Fitness are been based on the Clean Eating philosophy. Until recently, I wasn’t even aware that there was an “official” Clean Eating movement out there … it was just a term that I and a lot of others had been using for years to describe healthy eating habits.

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The Special K Diet - Does It Work? | Diet Reviews

Can Eating Special K® Cereal Really Help You Lose Weight?

I’ve noticed lately on Yahoo Answers a lot of questions around the Special K diet.  Does it work? Can it help me lose body fat or weight? And more importantly, is it sustainable?

So I decided to dig a little deeper on this particular diet, since it seems to be gaining in popularity.

First, it’s important to understand that to be successful at hitting your fat loss and overall fitness goals, you have to stop thinking about “a diet” as something you do before your vacation to the Caribbean.  Your “diet” is a combination of your choices in food and your lifestyle, not something you do for a few weeks. In other words, it’s a long term commitment to eating more healthy.

That said, can eating Special K cereal help you lose body fat or weight?

What Is The Special K Diet?

According to Kellogg’s website, the Special K Diet has you eating a serving of Special K cereal for breakfast with 2/3 cup skim milk and some form of fresh fruit, or a Special K waffle with light syrup. 

You then replace another meal with a serving of Special K Cereal, or one of their “meal replacement” products, which is typically a Special K Protein Bar.  You then eat your third meal (dinner?) as you normally would.

The Special K diet then allows you two snacks during the day, but they need to be Special K products — either Special K cereal or their pre-packaged snacks like Special K Protein Snack Bars,  Protein Water and Mixes, Special K Cereal Bars, or Special K Snack Bites. You are also encouraged to eat fresh fruit and vegetables throughout the day.

With this diet plan, they tell you that you can lose up to “1 inch from your waist in two weeks.”

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Should I Count Calories? | Diet and Nutrition

Counting calories can help you identify weak links in your diet. Learn how and when to calorie count without going crazy.

Few topics generate more debate then whether counting calories is an effective strategy for long-term fat loss.

The anti-calorie counting camp says that obsessing on calories alone can cause people to ignore the nutritional composition of their diet, and continue to eat unhealthy even if they are eating fewer calories. They’ll also point out that counting calories accurately and consistently can be a tedious and time-consuming activity, and may actually de-motivate people to eat healthier.

The pro-calorie counting side, advocates will point out that without having a good idea of how many calories you are consuming each day, it can be difficult to lose fat and avoid hitting fat loss plateaus later on. And because most people underestimate how many calories they are actually eating, counting calories can help provide a reality check.

So what should you do? Count calories or not count calories?

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Am I Fat? | Why Body Fat Percentage Is More Important Than Weight

Here’s a Little Secret: The scale lies. Learn why you should focus on decreasing your body fat percentage, instead of just your weight.

Stepping on the bathroom scale is a daily ritual for many dieters, athletes and fitness enthusiasts. After all  being healthy and in-shape means weighing less, right?

Scales seem to be everywhere: The home bathroom, the gym or health club locker room, and – of course — the doctor’s office.  We’re a society increasingly obsessed with our weight, but ironically, one that is becoming fatter than ever.

But what if you knew that your trusty scale was deceiving you? What if you found out that losing a pound or two (or even five) doesn’t mean you’ll look any thinner or more in-shape? What if I told you that losing weight is actually making you fatter?

Why Weight Loss Should Never Be Your Goal

Our preoccupation with moving that pointer on the bathroom scale down closer to zero is at the root of most people’s frustration with becoming healthier and more fit.  Crash diets, fad diets, endless hours of cardio, extreme calorie restriction and eating disorders can be traced directly to our desire to step on the scale and see that we’ve lost weight.

Yet the number that you see on the scale each morning is a terrible indicator of body composition.  Weight alone can’t tell you anything about the distribution of that weight. It doesn’t take into account the ratio of fat to lean tissue, which can cause very lean people to think they are fatter than they really are, and fat people to think they are leaner.  

In other words, losing weight can actually be a bad thing, especially if you are doing it at the expense of lean tissue like muscle.  If all you are using to gauge your fitness progress is scale weight alone, you are only getting half-the-picture.
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