There are really only two ways to lose weight: eat less or exercise more.   To lose one pound you have to either cut 3500 calories from your normal diet or exercise enough to burn off the 3500 calories.

The average person consumes about 2000 calories a day.   Walking for 15 minutes uses about 100 calories.  2000 calories may seem like a lot but it goes quickly.  A McDonald’s Big Mac hamburger has 560 calories, a glass of whole milk 160 calories, a small apple has 50 calories.  Cutting more than 500 calories from your daily 2000 isn’t recommended.  The body has a built in protection system that lowers your metabolism to conserve energy if food consumption is drastically reduced.   If you go on a 800 calories a day program within a week your body will compensate.

As you can see it takes about a week to lose a pound of fat.  The first week of your diet may result in losing more than one pound, but it’s probably just water weight.  Most diets increase the levels of fruits and vegetables which don’t contain salt, and decrease the level of prepared and processed foods which do contain a lot of salt.  Lowering the level of salt consumption results in water weight loss.

If you combine exercise with a restricted diet you can nearly double the weight loss.

Exercise has another advantage it boosts your metabolism from 10-15% for about four hours afterwards.   So walking for 45 minutes in the morning every day, combined with lowering your caloric intake, can mean you can lose two pounds a week.   If you can exercise for another 20 minutes in the afternoon you can boost your metabolism for the rest of your day and burn up another 200 calories.

An exercise program doesn’t have to mean hours in the gym lifting weights.  You can sneak in exercise almost painlessly.  Use the stairs instead of the elevator or escalator. Park at the edge of the parking lot.  Walk instead of driving.  If you have stairs where you work, change into tennis shoes and go up and down several flights on your lunch hour.  Make it a point to get up every hour and do some stretches.

Combining diet with an exercise program means you’ll not only lose weight faster, you’ll have more energy, and be healthier.