reduce body weight without accurate calorie counts and going to gym

Question

I am a guy from a middle class family.

6 months back, I was around 80 kg, but currently I am at 92 kg. I have a big belly also. I cannot afford a personal trainer to tell me what to eat and when to eat. I tried eating less, but my weight is not going down. I am walking 30 minutes a day and doing 25 sets of pull ups, but sometimes I am tempted to eat more without controlling myself, and I used to drink coke also. I am ready to work out, but due to the timing of my work, I am not able to do it on weekends. Please suggest any natural way to reduce my weight.

Answer 1

Doing 30 minutes of walking each day, and doing pull-ups, isn't a bad start to exercise. I assume that your pull-ups are vigorous enough of a workout that you raise a sweat? I'm also assuming, given you don't feel you're that in shape, that that's not 25 pull-ups in one streak? Either way, I'd suggest adding a few more exercises to cover other muscles. If you add squats and either push-ups or tricep dips, you've got things pretty decently covered without much extra effort. If you're looking for a way to motivate yourself, there are free apps that are associated with interval programs such as 100 push-ups or 20 pull-ups that will give you guidelines of how many to do in each session.

Quite honestly, what you probably need to do is to start charting what you eat and how much, without judgment and consistently. If you're not keeping track, you're not going to be able to properly regulate your food intake. At the end of the day, you can total up what you've eaten in the day and get an idea as to what calories you eat where. My suspicion is that it's more than you think. The first step is being aware of what you're eating. The second step is figuring out where you can trim excess food from your diet. Don't be afraid to keep a few indulgences — if you don't, the odds are that you won't be able to keep to the diet — but document them.

Exercise-wise, like I said, you're doing OK. You're not going to build any substantial cardio, build a lot of muscles, or burn enough calories to counter the food you eat, but that level of exercise is enough to improve your health and to keep your body's metabolism working efficiently enough to survive on just about any varied diet. As with the diet, don't try to push yourself too hard when it comes to exercise, or you'll burn out.

Above all, be patient. If you can manage a calorie deficit and do moderate exercise, you will almost certainly lose weight, but the odds are that the best consistent weight loss you'll manage is a kilogram per week, and half a kilo is more likely. And your weight will fluctuate a bit depending on what you've eaten the prior day, and while your body adjusts to the diet and exercise.

Answer 2

As you age, your metabolism will naturally slow down. Let that sink in for a second.

This means that unless you change your lifestyle, expect your body to increasingly become out of shape.

There are many gimmicks for losing weight; many of them, you can actually find online; however, none will help you long-term.

Changing your lifestyle doesn't have to be drastic or cost a fortune; it's all about having the right attitude and being consistent.

Here are a few things you can start doing to help lower your body fat (that's your actual goal):

Add more green vegetables to your meals. No need going on some fancy dieting program and such. Check what portions of your meals are green vegetables.

Add more fruits (not fruit juice) to your snack time. These keep you satisfied and reduce your cravings.

Drink more water. If it's too tasteless for you (one of the reasons people drink soda), add lime (or some liquid flavor) to give it some taste. This will cut down on the amount of sugar consumed as well as increase your hydration (which is good for weight-loss).

Your consumption is usually the first lifestyle you need to adjust. Once you start with those simple things above, you will actually start seeing results in your weight.

Now, your energy expenditure needs to increase. You don't have to do drastic things either.

Be more active (this is actually easier done than said).

Climb stairs instead of elevators. Don't rush yourself; go at your own pace. Enjoy the feeling of climbing the stairs.

When parking at work, stores, etc., don't park close to the entrance. Park farther away and enjoy the walk.

Power-walk. Instead of walking leisurely for 30 mins, power-walk (walking as fast as you can) and reduce the speed when tired.

If you can, bike more than drive. If that's not an option, walk more.

If allowed at work, alternate between standing and sitting while working. If allowed, supplement your chair with a ball and alternate between them.

There are still more things you can do; however, incorporating these few changes into your daily life will result in a wonderful transformation of your body (as well as provide you more energy for the day.)

I personally believe in exercising immediately after waking up. After waking up, if you can stretch for 5 mins (or perform 10,20,30 push ups), you'll realize how much energy you'll suddenly have in the mornings.

Sleep well. Stretch in bed if you can; it's fun.

Important Tidbits

Have fun with the new lifestyle. If you're forcing it and really uncomfortable with a step/plan/process, find an alternative that'll give you the same benefit. You can't lose weight long-term without enjoying what you do.

Eat cakes, pizzas, and soda. Yes, you can eat those......just not everyday. Eat them when you crave them and if you realize you're having it too often, cut back. If you find healthy alternatives to give the same benefit, go for them. Have fun with it.

Short-term weight loss programs have you doing many drastic things at once. If it's something you would like to try, I'd recommend the Insanity or P90X videos. Those will bring your weight down fast; however, it's hard to maintain the intensity for a long time.

All in all, have fun with whatever program you decide to go with. Part of losing weight is enjoying life and having fun with it. :)

Answer 3

Purely from a weight perspective (previous posts have covered various things about health) its all about calories in vs calories out. For your current level of activity you will have a level of maintenance calories, the amount of calories you need to eat to maintain your current weight. By creating a deficit (generally dropping by 300-400 calories) you will steadily lose weight until this level of calories becomes a new maintenance level.

You can go about this in two ways. First, by tracking all your calories using an app such as MyFitnessPal, in which you can scan barcodes, or search for foods and it will input the calories, but a lot of people don't like this for various reasons, remembering to do it if nothing else. Others just learn to cut down on certain things they eat regularly such as cake, chocolate, fizzy juice.Another option is always to start off tracking you calories to get an good understanding of what you currently eat, and what you may want to cut out, then just consciously limit what you eat.

Replacing sugary snacks with fruit can be good, and is certainly healthy, but the type of fruit can play a big part in how easy it is to maintain your lifestyle change. Fruits such as apples and oranges are largely made up of fast-carbs (sugars such as fructose), which are not good at satiating you. High protein or slow-carb snacks, such as peanut butter or oats (which could both be used in some form of healthy flapjacks) can avoid this and keep you feeling fuller in between meals, a bit of googling will find you good alternatives.

It is also important to maintain a good balance of carbs, fat and protein, with a basic balance of around 50% carbs, 30% fat, 20% protein. This can be mixed around if you're building muscle (higher protein) or running distance (more carbs), but that's not necessary for simply losing weight.

Drink plenty of water, and try and keep your salt intake low, this will reduce any water retention which also contributes to your weight.

Exercise wise, high intensity workouts (weight lifting, or sprints) can be a good way to go. They fit into a short time, and get your body burning calories for longer, but it should be thought of as a supplement to your weight loss rather than the main mechanism.

It will probably be difficult in the beginning, but if you stick with it and manage to adapt a healthy diet, and fit in regular exercise, you will feel all the better for it, and it will get much easier to maintain.

Answer 4

I think both @Sean Duggan and @Kneel-Before-ZOD already gives you a great answer. Here I just want to give you several tips on how to find alternative replacement for soda or cokes, etc...

I used to be a soda drinker, a lot, and also some iced tea, sweet iced tea, etc... Also I love to eat sweet meat. When I cook chick wings, I will add in a lot of sugar, honey... The bad thing is sugar or honey will increase your body fat very efficiently, which is a bad news for us.

The solution is easy, maybe not decent but you could have a try. I just replace soda with diet soda, replace sugar with 0 cal sweeter. Yes, the test of diet soda and 0 cal sweeter is not as good as soda with actually sugar but it can actually reduce the cal you eat, a lot.

I don't know any hard evidence that diet soda and 0 cal sweeter will do bad thing to your body, so you could try it safely.

Now, if you could replace sugar with sweeter, you actually already eat less cal. The next stop is to try to use less sweeter, maybe just one meal with sweeter a week, or less diet soda only for weekend. Or, you could replace with diet soda with iced tea you made yourself with sweeter. You could find a lot of recipe for iced tea online.

At least those method I mentioned helps me a lot. Now I only drink died soda over Sunday or even none a week. However, I used to drink soda several cans a day a year ago.