Until a magic weight-loss pill hits the markets, the best way to lose excess weight is by cutting calories and exercising. Fad diets may work in the short term, but they are hard to maintain, and the weight lost often comes back quickly. The reasonable way to lose 20 pounds, or more, is by limiting your caloric intake and exercising to boost your metabolism.
Ways to Lose 20 Pounds
Step 1
Cut calories. Calories provide energy. We burn calories by doing all of the activities of daily living. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stresses balancing caloric intake with calories burned. If more calories are consumed than burned, the excess is stored as fat. Just 3,500 additional calories is the equivalent of 1 pound. To lose 20 pounds, you must burn 70,000 more calories than you eat.
Step 2
Get active. While much of the focus of any weight-loss plan is placed on the diet, exercise should not be overlooked. The physicians at MayoClinic.com recommend getting at least 150 minutes of moderate exercise per week or 75 minutes of vigorous exercise weekly. Exercise should be distributed throughout the day, and if you find you are not losing weight, you may need to work out longer.
Step 3
Eat regularly. Skipping meals is asking for disaster. Andrea Giancoli, a registered dietician for the American Dietetic Association, cautions against skipping meals, especially breakfast, because it leads to binge snacking or “overeat(ing) at the next meal.” While she does not believe in eating unless you are hungry, skipping meals altogether is out. Hungry and ravenous are not the same thing. Hunger is good, but starving leads to a binge mentality, where any food, and a lot of it, sounds good. If you find that you are not hungry at meal time, a handful of nuts or a healthy snack of yogurt or fruit will sustain you until your next meal.
Step 4
Maintain self-control, especially if you have never adopted a healthy eating plan in the past. Do not expect years of bad eating habits and lack of exercise to disappear in a week, or even a month. The diet experts at MayoClinic.com say a reasonable diet would result in a weight loss of 1 to 2 pounds per week. At that rate, it could take 10 or more weeks to lose 20 pounds. However, weight lost at a reasonable pace is much more likely to be permanent, and you will not experience post-diet, yo-yo weight gain.
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