Doing the math on weight loss

Doing the math on weight loss
Health First Chiropractic

By: Richard Del Balso, DC
Tuesday, January 25, 2005 12:06 PM PST



As a health professional and a former owner of an exercise rehab
facility, it always amazes me - the crowds seem to magically appear in
our local gyms on Jan. 2. Like a thief in the night, just as magically,
they seem to disappear by March or April.

Maybe it's our wonderful spring weather in California. Or could it be
that exercising to lose weight is an annual ritual that's just plain
hard!

The sad part is that many fellow health professionals are clueless when
it comes to advising their patients about how to permanently lose the
extra pounds.

Typical professional advice I hear is to "just cut down on your
calories and walk 30 minutes every day." Good for health, but not
nearly enough for weight loss, unless you only have 10 or 20 pounds to
lose. So what is the answer for the 60 percent of the U.S. population
that is now classified as overweight?

The numbers tell the whole story. On average, a person walking four
miles per hour for 30 minutes, seven days a week, will burn roughly 250
calories daily - that equates to losing only one-half pound per week
(if you walk slower, it's even less).

Compare that to reducing your daily caloric intake by a mere 500
calories (one Big Mac is 595) and you'll lose one pound a week. Cut out
an additional 500 calories daily - did I hear three to four ounces of
snacks or chips - and you'll lose two pounds per week! Now, if you also
skipped those second helpings ...


The new government guidelines aren't going to help us, folks. While an
improvement over the old "food pyramid," these new rules - 2,000
calories per day for moderately active women between the ages of 31 and
50, and 2,400 calories for men - will guarantee failure for those
desperately trying to lose a lot of excess pounds.

Consider the following: A 5-foot, 4-inch female with a small frame
weighing 140 pounds who wants to get down to 120 pounds. If she eats
1,200 calories per day, it will take her more than 18 months to reach
her goal weight! At 1,000 calories, however, she would be celebrating
in just over eight months.

You don't have to be a math wizard to see that if she consumes the
government's recommended 2,000 calories daily - as most doctors and
dieticians may now recommend - she will never make it to her goal.

The bottom line is that good old-fashioned "calorie counting" is still
the gold standard when it comes to shedding those extra fat pounds and
keeping them off.

Oh, and one last point. Once you reach your goal weight, with proper
guidance, you will be able to increase those daily calories up to a
certain point without ever gaining back a pound.

And about that exercise program. It should be followed year-round - not
just during January and February!

reenum wrote:
Doing the math on weight loss
Consider the following: A 5-foot, 4-inch female with a small
frame weighing 140 pounds who wants to get down to 120
pounds. If she eats 1,200 calories per day, it will take her
more than 18 months to reach her goal weight! At 1,000
calories, however, she would be celebrating in just over
eight months.

What a bunch of crap! Yes lets just put her on a desert island for a
month and she will lose those twenty pounds and then some! That 140lb
woman could be eating the recommended daily allowance of 2000 calories
of HEALTHY foods if she was exercising daily and still lose
bodyfat/inches/scale weight! Its the caloric deficit created by an
ACTIVE lifestyle that will make her lose the extra twenty pounds in a
safe and LONGTERM way. Do the math of creating a caloric defict of 500
calories per day thru exercise/food choices for 1lb a week lost. She
will lose 20lbs in twenty weeks which is 5months - not eight or
eighteen as the article says! Guess they didnt think about factoring in
exercise eh? Lets just starve em instead!
And anyways whats the fixation on scale weight? One woman at 140lbs
could have a 30% bodyfat, while another could have 18% bodyfat - they
would both look totally different! One would be skinnyfat/pudgy in a
size 12 and the other would be sleek/lean in a size 4 - big difference!
NO wonder people are confused by all the misinformation out there! A
good example of how active daily exercise looks and how she got there
(read the side notes): http://skwigg.tripod.com/id3.html You dont have
to starve yourself to be lean.
joni

*Lift well, Eat less, Walk fast, Live long*