Plus four approaches − minus 5 kg

After researching through thousand of articles about effective ways of saying goodbye to my 6kg I drew a conclusion that I personally will follow four BIG approaches:

Calories intake

Calories consumption

Calories fighters

Good metrics

Calories intake    I have spent the entire evening making some important calculation I would need to follow to achieve my goal. Firstly, the amount of calories I have to take each day.    According to the general opinion we need 2,361 Calories/day to maintain the weight, we need 1,861 Calories/day to lose 1lb per week, and we need 1,361 Calories/day to lose 2lb per week. I don’t really like to count calories, but to understand how much actually I consume everyday I decided to put  in some efforts.    Luckily  I have found a food tracker in a bookstore so the process is supposed to be easier. The food tracker is a simple writing book each page of which is divided into five sections: Breakfast, Brunch, Lunch, Snack, Dinner and Notes where we can write all the food we eat during the day and it’s nutrition information.  In the Note field I will notice the physical activities I have done and the approximate burned calories per day. In addition to the food trucker we can use different phone applications, like DietHelper for instance.      To prevent  my body from stress I prefer to improve the second option in calories consuming – to reduce it from 1,861to 1500 calories/day.  As a result my daily calories intake ideally has to be like it will be written below: Breakfast – 300 calories Brunch –200 calories Lunch – 500 calories Snack – 200 calories Dinner –  300 calories Calories consumption     Clearly, counting calories is not really an optimistic option to work towards, although the result is probably more sustained than with some crash diet.    To increase the amount of calories burned in a day I decided to add physical exercises. I have found out that 1kg of fat equals 7700 kcal, so if I keep my diet the same and start working out I’m supposed to loose a kilo per 2 weeks. I turn it into numbers and here is what I  got: I have 6kg overweight, I have 3months to get rid of it, so my goal per month is 2kg, per week – 500g As I already mentioned above 1kg equals 7700kcal, so 500g equal 3850kcal Thereafter I have to burn 3850kcal per week, it means that daily I have to leave 550kcal. Calories fighters     I am not a fan of everyday 2hours work out in a gym, cause I can get easily bored and won’t do my best there, so the most successful option for me is to combine physical activities. I followed the exercise guidelines from the Department of Health and Human Services and they advice to get from 150 up to 300 minutes a week of moderate aerobic activity or 75 minutes a week of vigorous aerobic activity; and strength training twice per week.     Moderate aerobic exercise includes such activities as brisk walking, swimming and mowing the lawn. Vigorous aerobic exercise includes such activities as running and aerobic dancing. Strength training can include use of weight machines, or activities such as carrying groceries or heavy gardening.               Therefore the example of my exercise schedule looks like this : Monday is for aerobics, Tuesday is for hot yoga, Wednesday – gym, Thursday – swimming, Friday – dancing, concerning weekend I prefer to rest, do some light walking or detox. That was just an example of course, I will find out later the best combination for me. I have found a beautiful chart to calculate burned calories while training for an hour. Activity (1-hour duration) Weight of person and calories burned 160 pounds (73 kilograms) 200 pounds (91 kilograms) 240 pounds (109 kilograms) Aerobics, high impact 533 664 796 Aerobics, low impact 365 455 545 Aerobics, water 402 501 600 Bicycling, < 10 mph, leisure 292 364 436 Dancing, ballroom 219 273 327 Elliptical trainer, moderate effort 365 455 545 Football, touch or flag 584 728 872 Golfing, carrying clubs 314 391 469 Hiking 438 546 654 Ice skating 511 637 763 Resistance (weight) training 365 455 545 Rope jumping 861 1,074 1,286 Running, 5 mph 606 755 905 Running, 8 mph 861 1,074 1,286 Swimming laps, light or moderate 423 528 632 Swimming laps, vigorous 715 892 1,068 Tennis, singles 584 728 872 Volleyball 292 364 436 Walking, 2 mph 204 255 305 Walking, 3.5 mph 314 391 469 Yoga, hatha 183 228 273 Yoga, power 292 364 436 Right metrics     There is an opinion announced by Igor Klibanov that “counting calories most of the time is of limited use to people. Why? Because you can have 2 people who are identical in weight, age, sex, exercise levels, stress levels, etc.. But feed those 2 people the exact same number of calories and those 2 people will NOT gain the same amount of weight. One may gain nothing and the other may gain 3 pounds. Or one may lose 3 pounds and the other doesn't gain anything.    Body fat and weight are much more strictly controlled by hormones than by calories. Also, by doing excessive and exclusive cardio, yes, you may be burning calories during the workout, but due to a process called "adaptation", you burn fewer and fewer calories each time you exercise. You learn to become "fuel efficient." Doing excessive and exclusive cardio has a double whammy of also burning muscle. Muscle burns fat, so if you have less of the "machinery" that burns fat, you burn less fat”.    I partly share this view and for this reason would like to follow his advice to measure what I want to improve. So I get my camera and tape measure and track how I look and measurement of my arms, legs, hips and waist.    As Im a storng adherent of paper books and real writing instead of typing I have purchased a beautiful writing book dedicated to achieving my goals and all of the steps and changes I am gonna notice there and after summarizing it  - in my blog. So my individual plan for the goal “-5” is finished and it’s time to put it into practice.  I hope those plans seem realistic. What do you think? Have you struggle to loose weight too? Please feel free to comment below, I would love to hear your stories =)