Just wanted to add something. While exercise is mentioned constantly, and I DO think it is great, it really, in my humble opinion, comes down more to what you eat. As has been said, you have to take in less than you burn. It's that simple. And the problem with exercise is that you'd have to run a marathon every day to burn off what the average american eats. Let's look at some examples of common exercises for a 125 lb person:
Bicycling: 12-13.9 mph for one hour burns 480 cals.
Running: 12 min/mile, again 480 cals.
Tennis: general, 420 cals.
Walk: 17 min/mi, 240 cals.
All of these are calories per HOUR. Most people walk for a half hour. So, if you're 125 lbs, you've burned 120 calories.
Now let's look at some food calorie contents:
Small curly fry at Arby's, 310 cals.
Small fry from McD's, 210
Fry that comes with the value meals at McD's, 320.
What's my point? You can't even burn off the fries in your value meal with a 30 minute walk. BUT, you can cut more calories than you can burn in an hour by forgoing the fries! Or, even cooler, you've cut almost as much as you would burn simply by getting the small fries instead of the medium! Simply put, by making very slight adjustments in your daily eating on a consistent basis, you can make a MUCH more significant impact on your caloric intake to output than by exercising. An excellent diet plan that makes it really easy to monitor this is on the web called "The Hacker's Diet." Its not a plan at all, in that it doesn't tell you what you can and can't eat, but simply shows you how to monitor your caloric intake and compare it to your avg weight over the past seven days and see if you're taking in more or less than you're burning. It even has a program you can put on a palm pilot, if you have one, to track the results. And it's free, or it was when I downloaded it. A better tracking program, though, that runs on your computer is called "Weight Commander." You have to pay to register it, but you can try it for free for like 7 days before it locks up and makes you register. You simply weigh every day and it keeps a moving average, which is the real indicator if you're losing, not your daily fluctuations. It even has an allowance for women to track the monthly fluctuation due to water retention during that special time when "Aunt Flo" comes to visit!
Last part of my lecture, ladies and gents, lift weights. Its already been mentioned that muscle burns more calories than fat. This is HUGE. Adding one gram of muscle burns 50 extra calories an hour, that's 1,200 calories a day even while you sleep!!! You don't have to do workouts that make you big and look like a man, just do high repetition workouts that tone and make you look and feel better anyway. You can do these workouts in the half hour that you used to walk and you'll be amazed at the results. The key is that you're not losing the weight because you're exercising, its just that the muscle you've added is burning 1,200 cals a day per gram!
That's my more than 2 cents of weight loss advice for the day from a guy that struggled with his weight all his life. I was fat as a child, made fun of, couldn't get dates, low self esteem, etc. I got tired of it 2 years ago. Did a bunch of research, lifted weights, started playing tennis, changed my diet. Now, I'm close to 60 pounds lighter and have lost 6 inches off my waist. Got a little more to go, but I steadily lose 1-2 pounds a week. You've got to remember, you didn't put it on in a week, you're not going to lose it that fast either.
Good luck to all of you, I'm not some skinny "gym-rat" who tells you how easy it is while their metabolism is burning like mad and they have 6% body fat. I've got a underactive thyroid and know what you're going through. I still weigh every day.
Cheers,
Heath
