The Secrets of How to Lose 10 Pounds

The question “how to lose 10 pounds” is a common inquiry among those who cannot seem to shed off the extra weight. Of course, the answers to this question depend on a lot of factors. The most important of these factors include:

• How far are you in your weight loss regimen? Are you looking to lose the first 10 pounds to kick-start a new lifestyle or do you want to lose the last 10 pounds that would give you the body that is the envy of the whole town? Losing weight for the first time is easier; trimming your body down to lose those last 10 pounds in order to reveal your washboard abs is an altogether different story.

• How long are you giving yourself before you can lose those 10 pounds? Working on how to lose 10 pounds in a 2-week timeframe is easier than losing it in 3 days. The shorter your timeframe is, the more effort you need to put into your workouts and even then, there is no guarantee that it will work.

• What level of effort are you prepared to give in order to achieve your goal? More importantly, what is your motivation for doing this? The entire concept of losing weight is predicated on how much effort you are willing to give to achieve your desired results as well as mustering the motivation to see your goal to the end. If you go all out, you can lose 10 pounds in a matter of days. However, if you hate the gym, hate exercise, and love your sweets, chances are that losing ten pounds would only remain a goal and you’ll never get around to achieving it.

Before committing yourself to a weight loss regimen, you need to be able to answer these questions with total honesty. The secret to being successful at losing 10 pounds – or any weight goal for that matter – is to understand your goal and commit to a plan. Without these, you won’t have a chance at losing weight.

The Basics of How to Lose 10 Pounds

Losing weight is nothing more than simple mathematics. Food intake supplies your body with nutrients including calories which, in excess, are converted to fat. Protein is used to build muscles while calcium builds bones. Water retention is also a factor which contributes to body weight. The ideal goal is to lose 10 pounds worth of fat and, to a lesser extent, water.

The other side of the equation has to do with the energy you expend. Everyday, you spend energy to perform normal activities. This is called your basal metabolic rate. On top of that, exercise like running, strength training and other activities add up to the energy expenditure.

The basics of how to lose 10 pounds essentially lies in this energy balance. Are you taking in more energy than you can spend? Or are you spending more energy than you are taking in? When you take in more energy, you gain weight; when you spend more energy, you are losing weight.

Think of it much like you would a bank account. When you put in more money, your bank account grows; spending more than you earn means that your bank account shrinks in size. If you want to lose weight, you want to spend more energy. This is where a weight loss plan comes in.

The Most Effective Answers to How to Lose 10 Pounds

The best answer to the question “how to lose 10 pounds” essentially lies in dieting and exercise. Let us consider these two aspects in more detail.

DIET.

For you to learn how to lose 10 pounds, you will need to learn how to adopt a better diet. This is especially true if you are planning to lose the last 10 pounds of fat that are strangling your abdominal muscles and keeping them from the public view.

A good diet has to consist of balanced meals. Limit your carbohydrate intake and substitute it with more protein sources. A 2000-calorie diet is oftentimes ideal for people losing to lose 10 pounds in a 6-8 week period. You can either adopt a specific diet plan that you can find on the internet to guide you on what to eat but even if you do not do this, there are proven principles that will help you lose weight.

1. Shift your calorie intake to foods with low glycemic index. These are foods that burn more slowly and are therefore easier to handle than foods that cause a sudden spike in blood sugar level. Common examples include grains, certain types of rice, pasta, and wheat bread.
2. Spread out your meals. Avoid starving yourself one moment and then eating a lot in your next meal. Instead, break down your meals into 5-6 meals a day and proportion your calories properly throughout these meals. On average, never have a meal that makes you eat more than 500 calories in one sitting. This will control your blood sugar level so you do not get hunger pangs and be forced to eat a lot.

As a last word on dieting, always remember to drink a lot of water. Water is good for the body because it flushes out toxins and acts as medium for many regulative processes most notably fat burning. Without sufficient, no amount of dieting will help you achieve your goal of learning how to lose 10 pounds.

EXERCISE.

Cardiovascular workouts are the most effective ones to promote weight loss. A fast run burns more than a thousand calories in one hour. It also has the added benefit of increasing your basal metabolic rate so even if you are not working out, your body continues to burn more calories.

Strength training is another facet of exercising that you need to master in order to learn how to lose 10 pounds of fat. Strength training, or more commonly known as lifting weights, burns energy but also grows your muscles. Muscles help you lose weight because these are massive customers of energy. The bigger a muscle is, the more energy it demands during a workout. If you do not have muscles to begin with, there is nothing that will require energy to burn so it will take you a long time to burn fat.

One important facet of weight loss training is variation. This means that you need to vary your workouts and intensities every now and then. This will prevent your body from adjusting to the routine. When the exercises feel too easy, you are no longer helping yourself in learning how to lose weight. Continually challenge yourself so you can burn more calories per workout routine that you do.

The Most Important Takeaway to Learning How to Lose 10 Pounds

Weight loss is something that cannot be done overnight. It is a painstaking process that requires effort and dedication. To learn how to lose 10 pounds, you will need between 5 to 8 weeks of sticking to your diet and routine in order to achieve your desired results. In essence, the most important takeaway is to be patient and to continue following your programs. The results will not be obvious at first or it will plateau after a certain point but if you commit to your program, you should achieve your goals within a reasonable time frame.

In the end, it is all up to you. Put these tips and tricks to good use and you would be able to learn and apply the lessons of how to lose 10 pounds so you can own a body that you can be proud of.  Most importantly you should also consult a doctor to make sure that your body can handle any exercise or diet regiment that you are planning on starting.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, January 19th, 2012 at 4:11 am and is filed under Weight Loss. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.