Safe, Fast Weight Loss

Todays topic: Safe, Fast, Weight loss — do the words even all go together? Don’t you have to be “either/or” — either safe or fast?

That’s what most people think anyways….

Hopefully, you’ll think a different way when we get done with today’s article, because we’re going to explore some different methods of getting this all done.

The way I’ll do it is give you the principles behind losing weight fast, and then an example of what is a dangerous way to do it and then what’s the safe way to do it. Should be fun, so let’s get to it!

To Lose Weight Fast, You Gotta Reduce Calories FAST

The idea behind “losing weight fast” is to see a quick reduction, and to do this, you’ll have to give your body a reason to make such a dramatic change… and one of the most powerful ways to do this is to immediately cut out a bunch of calories.

Dangerous Way To Cut Calories

Go on one of those “7 Day Hollywood Miracle” liquid diets while exercising extremely hard. I’ll actually say it: if you’re not a very active person, then this could possibly be a good way to lose a lot of weight fast… But my main “beef” with these types of diets and products is they USUALLY work by making you crap – a LOT.

Instead of just reducing how many calories you’re getting in drastically by changing the source of them (from solid meals to liquid diet)–the ingredients usually “flush you out”… and while a little bit of this is probably good for most people… too much can dehydrate you and be unhealthy.

Safer Way To Cut a Lot O’ Calories Fast.

Most people will see immediate weight loss just by changing to eating low carb. We, as Americans, eat so many carbs during the day that it’s not even funny — so the first week of just simply cutting these out — usually most people see a big drop in weight.

The more drastic measure is to do a liquid diet like the one above, but without all the dehydrating diarrhea. Something like the “V-Diet” over at T-nation might do the trick for you if you wanna go this “extremist” route. But I say cut out all carbs and only drink coffee or water and you’ll start seeing the pounds fly off.

To Lose Weight Fast, You Gotta Burn Calories FAST.

In addition to just dieting, it’s good to get your butt up off the couch and do something because this will DRAMATICALLY accelerate your fat loss as well — so to lose weight fast — get your butt off the couch FAST!

Dangerous Way To Burn a LOT of Calories

While cutting extreme calories, you realize your thirty minutes on the stairmaster isn’t getting you anything. So you increase the resistance level. Still nothing (your heart rate remains the same). So you add 15 minutes to your time… then 30… then 40… now you’re doing over an hour of cardio per day.

You then decide an hour of cardio isn’t enough, so you add in another machine. An hour on the stairmaster followed by 30 minutes on the treadmill — that oughta do the trick! Then the process repeats and pretty soon you’re doing 2 hours (or God forbid more) of aerobic cardio and you’re enjoying getting that “skinny fat” look.

At this point, you’re mentally stressed because you’re not losing weight anymore, combined with the 2 hour abuse your body is taking on the daily your cortisol levels are through the rough. Meanwhile, keeping your body in this “fat burning” zone all the time has taught it to become very good at relying on fat for a fuel source for really low energy activities… so what does it do? What any smart body would do — makes more fat for you to burn! Worse of all: your thighs are still jiggly.

The Safer, Smarter Way To Burn All Em’ Calories.

You realize that it’s important to keep lean muscle because muscle burns calories even when you’re not doing anything… so on the whole… it’d be better to have a body composition made up of more lean muscle than fat (it’s actually “useful” weight).

You also realize when looking at a picture of a sprinter and a marathon runner that you don’t want to get the “skinny fat” look that’s so common with people who are “treadmill bunnies”. You want lean, sexy muscle covered with the smallest layer of fat possible.

And if you’re a woman you realize that unless you’re pumping major steroids you’re not going to turn into one of those overly-muscled female bodybuilder types because you use your common sense. You look at 99% of the guys who go to your gym and lift weights (and have been doing it for YEARS) and you see NONE of them even look close to the bodybuilders you see in magazines. You decide as long as you stay away from steroids, you can have a sexy, lean, VERY feminine body and not worry (and you’re right!)

So you start strength training 3x per week. This is good because challenging your body this way is teaching it to “hold on” to your precious lean muscle (so you avoid that skinny fat look and stay healthy). Then AFTER your weight lifting you want to burn more fat, so you head to the cardio machines and put in a minimum of 10 minutes of aerobic cardio (a max of 30 mins).

For the other two days a week, you wanna do a full out assault and burn as many calories as possible, so you start doing some interval training workouts for about 20 minutes, then you wait about 5 minutes for the fatty acids you released to go into your bloodstream and then you go do your treadmill stuff for another 15-20 minutes to burn up whatever fatty acids are now floating around.

By this time, you’re lean, you’re mean, you’re HEALTHY, and you’re well on your way to safe, fast, weight loss.