1. First off, let's be clear. You can lose five pounds in a week, but it won't be the kind of weight that you want to lose. A pound of fat is the equivalent of 3500 calories. So five pounds would be 17,500 calories. In my high-intensity circuit group workout this morning, one of my male clients burned approximately 950 calories in one hour. That would mean that he would need to do about 19 of those workouts in a week to lose five pounds of fat (given that his caloric intake stays the same). The bottom line is that it takes time to lose fat. The American College of Sports Medicine recommends that 1-2 pounds of weight loss per week is safe and effective. Anything faster than that is most likely loss of water weight (which can easily be regained) or loss of muscle mass (which slows your metabolism, making it easier to regain fat and harder to take it off). Don't set yourself up for failure! And don't succumb to society's penchant for instant gratification.
2. Get rid of your scale! (Or at least don't get on it so often.) If you were trying to improve the time that it takes you to run a mile, and you ran a mile for time every day, you probably would not see that much of a difference. In fact, you'll probably run slower than your fastest time most of the time. If you weigh yourself everyday, you are focusing on the outcome instead of the long-term behavior modifications that need to happen to see a noticeable difference. Besides, your scale weight can fluctuate based on water intake, sodium intake, the "time of the month", and a host of other factors; but that does not mean that you gained or lost weight. If you are an avid scale watcher, you may even modify your food intake based on what the scale says (for example, skipping breakfast because the scale says that you are a pound heavier than yesterday). This can be dangerous because you start to tinker with your metabolism in a negative way.
Only weigh yourself once a week, if that. Weigh yourself at the same time, under the same conditions each time. And be aware that your scale weight only tells a small piece of the story of the changes that occur in your body composition when you combine exercise and nutritional modifications. To create long-term changes and effectively manage weight loss, one must maintain or increase lean muscle mass. About 70% of your daily metabolism comes from muscle. But this poses a problem to your scale because muscle is heavy. So this means that you can decrease your body fat %, decrease your risk for many diseases, be stronger, be smaller, look leaner, increase your metabolism, and actually weigh more than you do now!
3. Why did you gain the five pounds in the first place? Many times weight gain is due to lifestyle changes. It can be stress, a change in job or commute, getting married, having children, a new restaurant opening, menopause, etc. If any of these things affect your weekly activity level and/or caloric intake negatively, you will gain weight. If you just start exercising without mitigating the external factors that caused the weight gain, then do not expect to lose weight. (But that does not mean that you shouldn't exercise if you cannot change your external circumstances; there are many other reasons to exercise.)
This step may be the hardest for many people. But realizing where the lifestyle change occurred may help in developing strategies to combat it or work around it.
4. Drink more and eat more (often). I am not a nutritionist. But I tell all my clients that the two biggest changes that they can make in their nutrition is to drink more water and eat more frequently (making sure to start with a good breakfast). Doing those two things will correct many other nutrition problems. For example, if you are drinking more water and staying hydrated, you won't drink as much soda, juice, Gatorade, coffee, tea, and other sources of empty liquid calories; thus you will effectively decrease your caloric intake. If you have eaten a snack between lunch and dinner, then you will be less likely to make bad food choices for dinner, overeat, and want dessert afterward. In addition, by the time you feel like you are hungry, your body has already gone into a catabolic state, which means that your lean muscle mass (which you worked so hard in the gym to gain) will be broken down to be used as energy. And remember, less muscle = slower metabolism.
So don't get thirsty and don't get hungry (by eating healthy foods every 2-3 hours).
5. Stay away from cardio (as you know it). Cardiovascular exercise has long been a staple of weight loss programs. Any trainer would say that you must do cardio to burn calories, and many (myself included) have prescribed 30-60 minutes of aerobic activity 3-5 times per week. But what if I told you that you could get better results in terms of improved VO2 max (more endurance), improved anaerobic power, and more fat loss in just 4 minutes of cardio 5 times per week? We'll talk about interval training in the next post. . . .
