Diets for Fast Weight Loss

Losing weight fast is the goal for many people, but it is not necessarily the healthiest way to lose weight. Losing weight at a steady rate with a well-balanced diet is a better approach to long-term weight loss and a healthier lifestyle. The first step in finding the right diet for weight loss is finding one that will help keep the weight off over the long haul. This is the true gauge of a successful diet plan.

Calories Count

• To lose one pound of weight, 3,500 more calories must be burned than consumed. To begin losing weight with calorie counting, you must first determine the number of calories that are required to maintain your current weight. Deduct 500 calories from that number and this will result in one pound of weight loss at the end of seven days.
  Exercise plays an important role in determining the number of calories required per day to lose weight. When you increase your activity level, you can increase the amount of calories that you are able to eat. Calories should not go below 1,400 per day. If the amount that you must eat to lose one pound of weight in a week is below 1,400, you should increase your exercise to allow for more calories consumed.

Meal Planning

• It is difficult to stick with a diet without meal planning. Planning allows you to control the amount of calories that you consume. Making good choices is an important part of weight loss and healthy dieting, but without a meal plan that is designed in advance it can be difficult to make the correct choices. Plan out your meals for the first couple of weeks of a weight-loss program until you are able to make healthier choices on your own.

Exercise

• You can lose weight simply with calorie counting, but exercise will help the process move much faster. With exercise, you are burning off the calories you consume at a much higher rate. This allows you to eat more food, which may help you stick with the diet for a longer period. Extremely low-calorie diets can be very difficult to maintain for a long time. Exercise allows you to increase your calories and give you more food choices during the day.

  A successful diet includes a maintenance plan. Monitoring your weight after the diet has ended is one way to make sure that you are maintaining your weight loss. When the scale begins to creep up, it is time to take a look at the calories that you are eating and where you may be slipping in your healthy diet.