Dear questioner,
First off, remember that although it’s very important to have a healthy diet, exercise often, and not become obese, it is also very important to have a healthy outlook on your body and fitness level. Don’t feel ashamed about your weight, just stay motivated to improve your fitness and work towards a healthier body.
On that note, GYM BRO MODE ACTIVATE!
Aight bro, you wanna lose some weight and get a straight up awesome body? You’ve come to the right place. Lemme give you a rundown about the key things you need to do to start losing fat.
You said that you tried exercising already, but it didn’t help. That makes sense, because in reality, the biggest part of weight loss boils down to proper dieting. That’s not to say working out isn’t important though, both play a strong role in losing weight. So, going forward, Imma split this letter into 2 sections: Dieting and Exercise.
Dieting:
Listen dude, dieting is very important, so read carefully. The main idea behind dieting is that when your body is in a calorie deficit (meaning you’re eating fewer calories than you’re burning) it forces your body to tap into its fat stores, effectively resulting in weight loss.
But how do you get into and maintain this calorie deficit? The first thing you need to know is your daily calorie needs. For men ages 14-18, it ranges from around 2000-2500 calories a day; for women in the same age range, about 1800-2200 calories a day. You also want to know how many calories you burn everyday. This may be surprising, but you can actually burn around 1300-2000 calories a day WITHOUT EXERCISE depending on your age, weight, and sex.
So how does this help? Well let’s do some quick math. Let’s say you eat 2000 calories a day, and burn 1500 without exercise. That means you are 500 calories above a deficit. Now, all you have to do is cut some higher calorie foods out of your daily diet so that you burn more calories than you consume. The optimal calorie deficit range is consuming between 300-500 less calories than you burn a day, which will result in consistent and healthy weight loss.
Now, this sounds easy, but it’s not. Cutting that much food out of your diet is tough, especially early on. That’s when exercising comes into play.
Exercising:
Okay, so yeah you can just diet and lose weight, but that means cutting a lot of food out of your diet. What is over healthier and more sustainable is exercising along dieting. For the sake of losing weight, exercising helps to burn more calories a day. For example, a half an hour jog could help you burn 150-250 calories. Now, instead of cutting a ton of food out of your diet (which may cause nutritional imbalances) you can eat a bit more but still lose weight, cause the exercise helps keep you in a calorie deficit.
Exercising has many other benefits in relation to weight loss as well. Like with strength training. If you’re overweight and strength train, not only will you burn calories (and by extension, burn fat) much quicker, but that energy stored in your fat will be repurposed into lean muscle. Not only with that make you look leaner and stronger, it is much healthier in the long run. Still, there’s one more thing to keep in mind in regards to losing weight. The kind of foods you eat. So back to dieting for a second round.
Dieting (again):
You’ve probably heard it a thousand times, but you get to hear it again; the kind of foods you eat when dieting matter most. It’s really important to still meet your daily nutritional needs when dieting. You have to make sure you still consume fruits, veggies, proteins, carbs, and dairies daily, the proportions are just going to be a bit different.
Notably carbs are the easiest to cut down on, as carbohydrates are your main source of energy (a.k.a calories). Therefore, an easy way to cut some calories from your daily meals would be eating less rice, less bread, less pasta, etc.
Lastly, and this is VERY IMPORTANT, I know it is going to be tempting to try a fad diet or something else that claims a quick and easy way to lose weight. It may even be tempting to stop eating for a while at a time, thinking it will help you lose weight. This is NOT TRUE! Fad diets and starving yourself both cause a similar problem. When your body goes extended periods of time in an extreme calorie deficit (like when you don’t consume any food for days) your blood sugar drops and your body begins to enter an “energy saving mode”. Entering this mode causes your metabolism to slow, as well as causes your energy levels to plummet. That means that once you start eating food again, since your metabolism is slower, it will be even easier to put on weight and harder to burn it off. DON’T TRY FAD DIETS AND DON’T STARVE YOURSELF! It’s not just ineffective, it’s detrimental to your well being.
Summary:
Aight bro, time to summarize how to properly lose weight with these steps:
Find out your daily caloric intake based on your age, weight, and sex.
See what foods you eat every day, and see what you could cut out (focus on carbs like rice and bread).
Create a workout that works for your and set time aside throughout the week to exercise (try at least 3-4 days a week).
Enjoy the healthy and consistent weight loss.
Hope this helps!
Dear Letterbox