by Chris Ensign

Created on: October 12, 2010   Last Updated: October 13, 2010

The best way to lose weight is to tackle the problem from all angles. There are tons of diets out there, and lots of exercise ideas, but the only way to make them work is to combine them together. Use the diet to create a lifestyle, and exercise to burn calories and shape your body to how you want it.

So what about diets that focus on glycemic index, low carbohydrate, high protein, or only certain foods? They all boil down to one simple fact: Total calories taken in-total calories burned=net gain or loss. Net gain means that you have stored the extra calories, and net loss means that the reserves (fat storage) were tapped into. With low carbohydrate and glycemic index diets, the body has to work harder to break down the complex carbohydrates and proteins resulting in a net loss at the end of the day. This may sound simple, but it is difficult to achieve without adding exercise to the mix in order to achieve that negative number.

Diets also should not just be a diet, but the beginning of a lifestyle change. One of the best ways to achieve this is to find a nutritionist and come up with a good plan. Start with the things you love to eat and build around that. In the end you’ll have plenty of things that are healthy, lower in overall caloric value, and you won’t go back to the bad habits as easily.

Your nutritionist will start at a number of calories taken in per day and then wean down slowly to promote weight loss and healthy eating. One of the things your body hates is drastic change. What that does is put it into emergency mode where your metabolism slows to compensate for the sudden loss of calories. This is exactly what you don’t want, and what your nutritionist can help with.

Exercise is the second half of the weight loss equation. The first step to finding a good routine is to get mentally prepared. Have some good music that drives you, not just loud and obnoxious, but really speaks to some primal senses. Second is to do some research on the time you have to devote to exercising. There are plenty of fitness experts who have created work out schedules for any type of situation. Plus it’s always easier to follow a plan then to try to do it on the fly. There’s not as much chance of losing faith because you have to follow the schedule instead of making excuses.  

Find exercise that have a fifty percent mix of aerobic and resistance training to have the best effect.  This way you can get the maximum benefit with the least amount of hassle. You need a good mix because the skeletal muscles can’t get enough nutrients without a strong cardiovascular system to put them there.

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