How to Lose Weight When Not Able to Exercise

Losing weight is as simple as your body using more calories than you consume. Exercise does increase the number of calories a person burns, however scientists are finding reason to believe that exercising also causes people to eat more after working out. After a hard workout at the gym or a long run, people are more likely to feel like they have earned a treat or may go straight for sugary, high-calorie sports drinks, offsetting the number of calories they just burned. Being unable to exercise may not be detrimental to your weight loss after all.

Things You'll Need

• Weight loss journal

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Instructions

• 1

  Calculate the number of calories per day your body burns. You can use an online calculator for this, or for a good general rule, men can multiply their weight by 12 and women by 10 to determine your caloric baseline. A 200-lb. woman probably burns about 2,000 calories per day without exercising. If your weight is generally consistent and you know how many calories you are burning per day, then you also know approximately how many calories you are eating each day on order to maintain that weight.

• 2

  Set a weight-loss goal and determine the number of calories your body would require to reach that goal. If you are a 200-lb. woman and you wish to weigh 180 lbs., you should cut back your caloric intake to 1,800 per day. This method will take more time than a more drastic calorie cutback, but will also be less likely to cause you to yo-yo your weight up and down than trying something more severe. One pound of fat contains 3,500 calories, so to lose a lb. of fat you need to cut 3,500 calories from your diet. It is not recommended that you try to lose more than two lbs. of weight per week, so if you choose to set more stringent goals, limit your cutback to not more than what would amount to two lbs. a week.

• 3

  Write down your goal and your normal eating habits in a journal. People who use an online weight-loss tracking program, many of which include food journals, have been proven to be more successful in long-term weight loss. Keep track of everything you eat and drink, your serving size and when you eat it so that you pick up on your eating habits. At the end of each day or after the first week, go through and calculate how many calories are in each of your usual meals. Most people eat the same things regularly, so once you know the calorie count in each of your standard meals you won't have to calculate them again. Honestly writing down your eating habits also forces you to acknowledge them.

• 4

  Analyze your eating habits and make choices about where to make changes. Diets are far less successful than lifestyle changes. Assess your eating habits as noted in your journal and decide what areas you feel confident you can cut back on calories. Maybe you do not need dessert every day. Maybe you can switch from a double-cheeseburger to a single, or a salad with tuna and low-fat dressing once in a while instead of pasta and sandwiches for lunch. To lose weight, your daily calorie consumption needs to average the intake goal you set, so it's okay if one day you go a little over as long as another day your total is a little under.

• 5

  Drink eight to 10 glasses of water a day. People are often thirsty and misinterpret the body's signals of thirst as those of hunger. Make sure you are consuming enough water and you may find that you aren't as hungry as you thought.