How to Lose Weight Fast and Safely

How to lose weight fast?  Can it be done?  Well, perhaps. Can fast weight loss be achieved safely and permanently?  Not really.  When it comes to weight loss there are no simple and quick solutions.  We don’t get overweight over night, and we don’t lose it quickly over night, either.

Fast Weight Loss Methods

People have tried many things to lose weight fast, from fad or crash diets to dehydrating themselves by taking diuretics and laxatives, and sitting in saunas.  Quick weight loss methods result in primarily water loss and little fat loss.  Most of the time individuals end up feeling weak as they lose water, which makes up 70% of the body.  Water loss leads to muscle weakness and poor circulation depriving the body of oxygen and needed nutrients.

How to Lose Weight Fast?: the HCG Diet

A popular diet these days that touts rapid weight loss is the HCG Diet.  The HCG Diet involves calorie restriction of 500 to 750 calories a day in addition to daily administration of HCG either by injection or use of oral drops.  HCG can help burn calories from fat.

The premise behind the diet is that though the 500 to 750 calories is not enough to meet the basal metabolic needs of the body, the additional calories the body needs will come from the burning of fat by the HCG.  While that fat might provide needed calories it does not provide vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients that the body requires for optimal function.  Though rapid weight loss is reported with the HCG Diet, the program is only 6 weeks or slightly longer.  One cannot continue on 500 to 750 calories indefinitely.  So it’s doubtful that the HCG Diet will lead to long lasting results unless a long term nutrition and exercise plan are also instituted.

Best Ways to Lose Weight

A weight loss plan should center around the following tips.  A major key to achieving weight loss, and one that is frequently overlooked, is having optimal hormone levels.  The body runs more efficiently and better when hormone levels are optimized. So if you are overweight, be sure to have your thyroid, sex hormones, and growth hormone levels measured.

Avoid high glycemic foods and foods that are processed or contain high fructose corn syrup (soft drinks and just about everything that is packaged) or trans fats.  Eat low glycemic foods that will keep blood sugar and insulin levels from getting too high.  Extra sugar gets converted to fat and high insulin prevents the body from burning calories from fat.

The best exercises to lose weight include strength training and short bursts of activities performed at near maximal exertion, or high intensity followed by arecovery period and repeated for many cycles, sometimes called high intensity interval training (see “Exercises for Weight Loss”).  Strength exercises build muscle and muscle burns more calories than fat even at rest.  High intensity exercises will also burn more calories and unlike aerobic exercises will raise your metabolism for  hours longer enabling you to burn more even more calories.  Both, strength training and high intensity training will increase release of growth hormone and testosterone, which then improves metabolism even more.  And yes, women need testosterone too.

It is still recommended to perform aerobic exercises too, to build a foundation of cardiovascular fitness.

By following the above recommendations you should be able to lose weight at a steady pace and be better able to keep it off.  Because if you cannot keep it off, you have not accomplished anything.  Also see “Natural Metabolism Boosters”.