Really easy ways for normal people to shed pounds

         

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The question on the table is a common one. How can normal folks, with normal lifestyles shed pounds? The answer is easier said than done, but I’d like to say it first and break it down second. It’s all about prioritizing diet and exercise. I am a fitness professional and owned my fitness company since 2012, I see a lot of people as described above. I have helped many of these people make healthy lifestyle changes by creating ways to make better choices. It’s easy to say that if you want to lose weight make diet and exercise a priority, but the trick is how, and the magic is how can you sustain a lifestyle change. Let’s start with the diet.

There are 168 hours in a week. Most people, who are average in going to the gym daily, get about 6 hours of exercise per week. Let’s say you average 6 hours a sleep per night that leaves 120 hours in the week left to eat, drink, and count calories. What you eat, when you it, and how much is what fuels your lifestyle change. If you want to shed pounds you must alter your diet. This is much more than counting calories, cutting carbs, and starving day after day. In fact diets that I just described don’t work in the big picture. Here’s what you do. Log your food for a couple days, see the attached food log. I don’t mean count calories here, that may come later. This logging is so you can see what you’re eating daily. Don’t be shy, or misleading by restricting what you eat on these logging days, because it will on’y hurt you in the end game. We need to see what’s happening before we can correct the diet. Once we know what your eating we can start to “tip the scale.”
weekly workout+exercise glossary

+Food Log copy

We tip the scale by making more healthy food choices than unhealthy. In this case we are trying to shed weight, so by replacing refined grains with whole grains and eliminating short chained carbohydrates (i.e. candy, pasties, cakes) with longer chain carbs (i.e. fruits, veggies, whole grains). Making these changes in your food log is like plugging new numbers in mathematic formula, and getting a new solution. The timing of what you eat is also important, I like good fiber in the morning, followed by fruit, dairy, and whole grains mid-morning. Lunch calls for a healthy mix of protein, fat/oils, carbohydrates, and should be the biggest meal of the day. Mid-afternoon is a great time for a fibrous snack of apples and oranges, and dinner should be comprised of lean protein and carbohydrates, (i.e. fish and brussel sprouts)

Make these changes and you will see dramatic results in your body. The way you feel, and the way you look. This is also a sustainable method of weight loss and healthy options for your life. Now let’s get to exercise.

I hear all the time that you loss weight by burning more calories than you consume, but this is a loaded statement because most people have no idea how many calories they burn on a daily basis. That’s not to say they are ignorant, I’m just saying we aren’t hook up to accurate logging systems to track all of our moves. We have come a long way with modern technology, but that is only a rough estimate to what is really going on in our body. That said, we all know we expend calories by living, that is without exercise. We could say that someone could lose weight by monitoring calories only, without exercise. Then why exercise? Because exercise, any exercise, boosts your metabolism on a daily basis. It’s not just the calories burned during the exercise, it’s the metabolic boost you get throughout the day. I recommend at least 30 minutes of exercise per day, everyday. That doesn’t mean dress up for the gym, or completely change your outfit to go for a run. Just yesterday I saw a guy, looked to be in very good shape, doing lunges in a crowded subway station. He was in his suit, and was switching his briefcase in his hands each lunge he took. I told him he looked good, and he laughed saying, “gotta get it in somehow.” That’s what I mean. I do air squats while my coffee brews in the morning, and pushups first thing when I get to my office. You can find activity everywhere. Find what you can do for exercise and make it part of your routine.

I have hundreds of workouts, and ideas about great metabolic blast methods, but for the purpose of this article and the “normal folks looking to shed pounds” I think the lifestyle you lead is really is where the solutions lay. Good luck and call me if I can help. At TriJake Fitness we always move forward.