WEIGHT LOSS ? BE PATIENT

Patience and Persistence.

Realistic expectations.

All kinds of factors figure into losing weight. Everything from metabolism, types of food/drink, exercise amount and intensity blah blah blah.

Basic math of it from what I've learned is...when you use 3500 more calories than you took in...you'll have lost one pound. If you did it by starving...that pound will likely be a combination of lost fat (good !), lost muscle ( bad ! lowers you're daily normal burn off rate), and lost bone mass (real bad !).

Yet all the fancy thinking aside, the belly is alot like the old bank account...if you take out more than you put in...the balance goes down...if you put in more than you take out...the balance goes up.

So basic low activity American lifestyle figure 1700 calories a day just to go about a normal day of breathing, sleeping, checking your mail, running errands. As you increase muscle that rate will go up. But for ball park figuring for the average person needing to lose about 85 pounds...just figure 1700 calories.

A "no-exercise" diet to lose 1.5 pounds a week, which is most likely a health pace, would require a reduction of 750 calories a day...leaving an intake of 950-1000 calories a day. All kinds of ways to do that and still feel full, personally I recommend drinking at least half a gallon of water a day to help.

Adding Walking to your regime, at about 20 minutes a mile or a little quicker, isn't too tough. Especially starting out with half mile or whatever you can do and working up a little each day...but eventually get up to 4 miles a day. Doesn't at all have to be all at once...Break it up into 2 forty minute walks..just try to walk fast enough to get your heart beating fast, but if you get to where you can't carry on a conversation without gasping..slow it down...if you can sing a song while walking, speed it up! But those 4 miles will burn off about 500 more calories a day which would rip an additional pound of week off.

Bonus points...the walking will increase muscle, and gradually raise the basic rate of 1700 higher. But 1000 calories a day and two 40 minute walks...expect to lose 2.5 to 3 pounds per week. Roughly 12 pounds per month.

As the weight drops down, the number of calories burned off per mile will actually drop a little, but this will be more than offset as your pace increases bit by bit.

7 whole months of this is pretty intense and you might be thinking you should be losing weight even faster. Truth is...that is unreasonable to expect it to drop faster, heck even maintaining that strict regime for 7 months is NOT going to be easy, but definitely can be done.

Keeping your calorie intake at about 1700 but just adding the walking would take about 85 weeks to lose 85 pounds...and that 85 weeks is going to go by pretty quick without being calorie obsessed just calorie conscious.

Don't waste your calories on pop and candy and doughnuts...spend those 1000 or 1700 calories wisely. Make sure they are only in the first 10 hours of the day, nothing after that but water. Drink plenty of water and take a daily vitamin.

Be patient...and persistent. A pound a week doesn't seem like much return on your investment...but it is better than gaining, and without being obsessed you will turn around pretty quick and be shocked how fast the time went by and how much you lost.

Start walking...however many minutes you are able...do it again later, and keep increasing even if it is only a couple extra minutes each time.