Q: I love that I have the information I need to lose 2 pounds a week; however, I would like to lose more than that. How can I lose 4 to 5 pounds a week? I have a total of 96 more pounds to lose.
A: To lose a pound, you must burn 3,500 calories. As I've said before, it's all about the math — how to burn more calories in the most effective way.
You can only do so much resistance training without damaging your muscles and impeding your results. Additionally, you can't starve the weight off: If you eat fewer than 1,200 calories a day, you will sabotage your optimal results. Therefore, cardio is weight loss extra credit. It allows you to burn additional calories without overtraining. This is one of the reasons some Biggest Loser players can still lose 20 pounds a week, even 7 weeks into the program.
Think about the math: If you are eating 1,500 calories a day — we assume your BMR without exercise is 1,600 (this is actually my BMR) — and you do two 1-hour cardio sessions that burn 500 calories each (one in the morning and one at night), the two sessions, along with your regular daily activity, will speed up your base metabolism to at least 2,000. As a result, you will have burned about 1,500 calories that day — that is, almost half a pound. At that rate you will be losing up to 3.5 pounds a week.
That said, you are bound to lose more weight during the first two weeks of any weight loss regimen because of the dramatic change in your diet and the loss of excess fluid. After that, it's all about crunching the numbers, and cardio is the key.
I am just getting into the Biggest Looser show. I really like it. I noticed in your slideshow you are wearing a "body bug". Do you feel as if it helps you and how long have you been using it? I am just curious since I wondered if it would help me too. -april
ReplyDeleteI have the "sister" version of the BodyBugg, the GoWear Fit. Made by the same company but much less. So far I really like it. The only thing it doesn't seem to register is bicycling, so if you do that a lot, you'll be disappointed.
ReplyDeleteIt takes in and registers a lot of information, but if you want to know your calorie deficit, you will have to input the food you eat.
Overall I really like it. After working out, I love to download the data and see what I expended. I think they have some info you can check out on their site, www.bodymedia.com but I'm not sure what all they changed. The site was recently modified.