Losing Weight Fast - Is It Real?

The challenge of fast weight loss is always in the minds of people carrying extra pounds in their bodies.  Fast weight loss is a desire of many, and stress is usually is placed on the word FAST.  Let's take a look what's fast and can you lose a lot of weight fast.

Why Fast Weight Loss?

Why fast weight loss is so important for us?  Well, we all want to look great for a party that (darn!) happens in a couple of weeks.  Or, we tried so many diets and neither of them gave us the weight loss we wanted.  And, being humans, we are extremely impatient and want this weight to come off right now, possibly, with no efforts at all.

How Fast We Want To Lose Weight?

No matter what the reason is, we want to lose weight fast.  When we talk to people coming to our clinic they mean 10 lbs per week is fast. Yes, 10 lbs a week is fast and very appealing target.  In fact, most people are so fixated on "How To Lose Weight Fast" question that it makes perfect point for all kind of marketers to explore.  Just walk in your nearest grocery or drug store and grab any, and we mean any, glossy magazine.  With 90% chance you will find revelations like "I lost 10 pounds a week!" on the front cover.

Can You Lose 10 Pounds per Week?

Let's take a look.  A pound of fat roughly equals 3,500 calories, so when 1 pound of fat burns, it produces 3,500 calories of energy for your body to use. Is it a lot?

Take a look: Your body needs a certain amount of calories per day:

• 1,900 for women and 2,100 for men who do not exercise at all
• 2,300 for women and 2,500 for men who moderately exercise every day (30 minutes of moderate-fast walking every day)
• 2,600 for women and 2,900 for men who exercise vigorously daily (several hours of good sweating in a gym daily)

In fact, a person that weigh 175 lbs has to walk 35 miles or 56 kilometers to burn 3,500 calories. It is 10 hours of walking.  If you weigh 210 lbs, you can run a marathon instead.  If you are lighter, the marathon distance will not be enough though, so keep running.

All this for just one pound?  Sadly, YES.

Do the math now. Ten pounds is 35,000 calories.  To burn this amount in 7 days, you have to burn 5,000 calories a day.  This can only be achieved by full-time athletic training 7 days a week.

And remember, this assumes you DO NOT EAT at all!

With all those numbers it is easy to see that losing 10 pounds in a weeks is doable but very, very unrealistic and dangerous thing, so how come those magazines scream about 10-pound weight loss?

Where Fast Weight Loss is Coming From

The weight loss you read about on the covers of magazines is usually a first week result and only a small portion of that loss is from body fat. Why?  Because our body does not start burning fat as soon as we stop eating.

Glycogen

Our body has a short-term storage of energy in the liver, which is called glycogen. If we start fasting, or eat too little, our body reaches for glycogen and quickly converts it to glucose (sugar) for energy.  In fact, glycogen storage can last up to 3 days, during which FAT IS NOT used. Glycogen has some weight, so when it is used, you will become lighter, but your fat will stay where it was before.

The food we ate before we started dieting

It is not a secret that all diets require you to eat less.  When one starts a diet he or she eats less, but the amount of food consumed before the diet can take up to 72 hours to clear.  And that's a lot of food you used to eat, right?  Well, give it or take, and no matter how weird it may sound, but few pounds can be written off to waste.

Water

Our body adjusts to energy deficit and during the first week we may lose more water than usual.  This is normal and can add to fast weight loss effect.

Fat (finally!)

Body starts burning fat after several days of energy deficit and exhaustion of glycogen storage in the liver.  Fat is a last resort for our body - an emergency ration - that is used last.  It will get burnt at a rate necessary to balance energy needs.  Burning 1000-1200 calories of fat per day will give a loss of about 1-1.5 pound in 3 days.

What Happens Next?

After 1 week of strict dieting and 10 pounds lost, the feast and celebration follows.  The body, which now has unlimited source of energy, flip all the switches to direct it back to glycogen, and most importantly - fat.  In the best case scenario, the weight will rebound to 2-3 pounds less than before the diet, however, many people will go back to the same weight or even higher weight because of yo-yo effect.

Why It Is Not Good

One week is not enough for our body to adjust properly to lower energy requirements.  Abrupt loss of nutrient signals emergency.  The plenty of food that follows, in turn, sends a wrong signal and makes it even worse, as now the body tries to store at maximum, as who knows when another week of fasting will come.  Result of this kind of weight loss is often opposite of desired - a weight gain.

Dr. Robertus' Solution

Dr. Robertus' Diet & Weight Control Program offers medically designed and doctor supervised weight loss protocol that makes your body burn fat and promotes preservation of muscles and lean tissues during weight loss phase.  The program provides optimal balance of nutritional elements, as well as vitamins and minerals to ensure that your body is provided with all building material it needs to sustain and function without fatty tissue.

For more information about the program, please click here.