Many people ask me about how they can lose weight and get into good shape (at least, into better shape than they are), so here is the mantra:

Some background:

Your body weight comprises of muscle mass, bones, fluids and fat. At any point of time your body uses energy derived from the food that you eat to run its basic systems like breathing, blood circulation, digestion, new growth, tissue repair etc. and this set of functions are called Basic Body Metabolism. In addition, the body requires energy to perform functions such as walking, running, climbing stairs and even sitting at the same place and thinking too. Body mostly relies on the energy derived from the food you eat to run its basic body functions and day-to-day common functions. So, it is a finely tuned system, like a car, you put fuel (food) into it and it runs for a certain mileage, at a certain intensity. However, on a daily basis, when there is a surplus of food, the body, unlike the car, stores it quite efficiently into high density energy material, the fat! So, if you fall sick or are unable to eat for whatever reason, body has reserves for your survival.

On a daily basis if your calorie (energy) intake is much higher than your calorie expenditure, you would accumulate a good amount of fat over years and it has been well proven that one is much more prone to multiple problems including some serious ones like arterial blockages owing to higher fat accumulation.

The key to reducing your body weight it to consciously either reduce the calorie intake, increase the calorie expenditure or both. Most workable weight loss programs are structured around this balance of energy intake and expenditure, but the variations/customizations include:

• Increasing your metabolism and calorie expenditure by the intake of coffee, tea or other stimulants.
• Making lifestyle changes such as avoiding lifts/escalators, walking to office, doing house work more often etc. thereby increase your calorie expenditure.
• Starting a workout program to increase the calories you spend
• Customizing your diet in calorie mix and/or quantity.

So, what should you adopt as the “best” way of reducing your weight and looking good? The question itself raises many important sub queries:

1. When do you know that you are overweight (well! a paunch is, of course, a dead giveaway, but what about the borderline cases?).
2. What is my target weight and does reaching the right weight translates to “good health” once I achieve my weight target?
3. How long will it take?
4. Do I need a plan? How do I make one?
5. How do I execute it?
6. Where do I get more information from?

Following sections deal with the above questions

The Goal: Am I overweight?:

Ideal body weight is measured as BMI (Body Mass Index) and is weight/sqr(height) (all in MKS units). See http://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dnpa/BMI/adult_BMI/about_adult_BMI.htm

For example if you weigh 60Kgs and your height is 180cms, your BMI is 60/(1.8*1.8) = 18.51.

Now, what is the “good” BMI to have: The following classification of your weight category is the thumb rule for selecting your target BMI:

• Underweight = <18.5
• Normal weight = 18.5-24.9
• Overweight = 25-29.9
• Obesity = BMI of 30 or greater

Assuming you need to have a BMI of 20 to be in the “ Normal weight” category, compute your ideal weight with the formula. So, once you know your ideal weight, the target for the weight loss is set.

An important fact to remember here is that the above target set is a rather simplistic way of setting the target, as the other important factor is: how is this weight distributed in fat, muscle, fluids and the bones. The weight ranges are different for males and females. Though important, these factors should not make your target setting so complicated that you give up at the very first step of a realizing a fitter you. As long as this goal motivates you to adopt lifestyle changes and commit you to realizing the target by healthy means, you still benefit a great deal. The target weight still is a worthwhile figure to start with.

Would I be in good health, if I reach that weight?

You’d be definitely in better shape than you are, if you aim for a lower half of the “ Normal weight” category (see the weight categories as per the BMI) and are currently not there.

“Good health” is an all encompassing term for multitude of aspects of fitness which include your general well being, risk factors associated with having a heart/lung problem, risk of diseases like diabetes, arthritis, range of motion, and proneness to infections, among others. So, a simple answer to the above question is: that you’d be in better health than you are and it’d be worthwhile to invest your time and energy to reach your target weight.

Duration, how long will it take:
Each Kilogram of body weight requires about 7000 calories of energy to build up, so if you lose 7000 calories, you'd lose 1 Kg of weight.
Assuming that you are a proverbial white collar office worker who sits around working at the desk, attending meetings, making presentations, gossiping and getting some work done on a daily basis. Let’s see how you spend your energy on a daily basis:
Basic Metabolism and normal workday: 2500 cal/day
If you work out once in a while, the following list tells you what energy you spend:

• running: 500c/hr
• biking: 400/hr
• swimming: 300/hr
• weight training/gym: 200/hr

The above list is somewhat indicative in nature; it also depends on your weight, but is correct in terms of “order of magnitude” figures.

In order to lose weight, you have to add up your energy expenditure, see how much calories you consume and try to build a deficit in the body for it to tap the reserves (hopefully fats!).

For example you consume about 2600 calories worth of food a day, if your budget for your Basic metabolism and daily routine work is about 2500 calorie, you’d be building a surplus of 100 calories a day and in a couple of months (70 days), you’d gain a Kg in weight.

The healthy strategy to weight loss is to use a combination of reduction of calorie intake and increase the calorie burn through a healthy lifestyle and/or workout program. A crash diet or a very aggressive exercise program usually doesn’t work and can be quite stressful. A moderate intensity workout combined with minor diet change (assuming the current diet is not already very unbalanced) works quite well for most people.

Coming back to our target setting: If you need to lose 5 Kgs weight, you need to set a realistic timeframe to achieve that goal. 5Kgs weight loss means that you have to build a calorie deficit of 5*7000 = 35000 calories, which means, given a 2600 calorie daily diet, you’d need to starve for 14 days non stop to lose this weight!

Let’s see what happens if you cut out 300 calories worth of food every day and add an exercise program to burn 500 calories a day, you need 44 days to reach your goal. This sounds much more reasonable. So, if you plan to take a day off every week from this routine and add a buffer of few days for parties/boredom etc, you’d surely achieve your goal is 2 months or so. But, the plan is still quite ambitious than it seems! And you may like to go easier than this and set a time frame of 3 months. The reason why it is ambitious is that you’d have to commit to an hour of vigorous exercise every day and at the same time cut out on most desserts/sweets. So your ambitious time target of 2 months may not be realizable, unless you can commit to this hard discipline.

An easier target is to give yourself more time by keeping the workout time as 1 hour every day; reducing 100 calories off your current diet, but increase your time target to 4 months (350 calories a day consumed by exercising means 112 days for 35000 calories with 12 off days or so). This seems like a realizable goal.

How do you know how much you need for Basic metabolism and “normal routine work”?

The calculation is somewhat complicated (See the Appendix ). However, for simplicity sake you can use 2000 calories as the energy required for your basic metabolism plus your sedentary lifestyle.

So, you have the target weight and the time frame to achieve it in planned out. You also have worked out the time you have to commit to an exercise program and minor diet change (skip that dessert or no sugar in coffee) in place. Is this your complete strategy to a fitter you? No, the crucial parts are the lifestyle changes and an active workout plan, besides the dietary adjustments that you have figured out by now. These are discussed in the following sections.

Making of the strategy:
First the basics:

You can achieve your weight target goal much earlier than your target date! The key is the multi-prong strategy comprising of:

Most people fail at their health plans because of lack of exercise plan or an incorrect exercise plan.

 

Most food items list the calorie contents (per 100 gms usually) and %DV (% Daily value assuming a 2000 calorie diet). So whatever you consume try and figure out the total calories you are consuming and stay within your 2000 calories budget for the day. Watch out for the items with high %DV for “Fats, saturated fast, Trans fats etc, simple sugars), avoid foods very high in sugars/fats. Measure your typical daily diet and commit to a change if required in order to add up your food consumption to 2000, but do not over do. Have a good enough, modest adjustment in diet, unless you are already way-off from your target weight.

 

The only way you are going to burn high number of calories is by doing aerobic workout for an extended period of time. You need to figure out how you do “aerobic” workout by the following:

When you start exercising your body starts consuming glucose in the blood which is replenished by the glycogen from the liver (which in turn was stored from the glucose in the blood after having the carbohydrates as part of your meal!). When the glucose level depletes in your blood and there are no carbohydrates in your stomach, the body gradually shifts the fuel being used to Fat, but this cycle can only be sustained at a low to moderate intensity.

How do you know if you are in the zone of “Fat burn”, very simple: your heart rate is a very good indicator.

Men: BMR = 66 + (13.7 X wt in kg) + (5 X ht in cm) - (6.8 X age in years)

Women: BMR = 655 + (9.6 X wt in kg) + (1.8 X ht in cm) - (4.7 X age in years)