How to lose weight fast

How to lose weight FAST

If I capitalize FAST that means its even faster, right?!

Ok I am going to share with you my top tips to help you lose weight fast. But before I get there for you, I have a few disclaimers. Because its important.

1. This is not how I recommend you lose weight if you do not want to yo-yo diet and have the pounds come back on. This is the, in some ways, easier way to lose weight but NOT a long term solution. If you want a more long term solution, hang on with me as I will speak on that too.

2. Being healthy, hitting a goal weight, gaining muscle: these are all lifelong journeys. And what I mean by that is once you hit a goal, the goal post is going to move. When that goal post moves, your habits are going to change- eat more, eat less, move more, move less, workout more, workout less, etc. etc.

3. To lose weight fast, there are a few underlying assumptions. You need to take care of your health in other ways- sleeping well, staying hydrated, reducing stress to name a few. Working out is the tip of the iceberg. Foundational activities, like sleep, nutrition, and stress management are king when it comes to maintaining your goal weight.

Ok so now to the nitty gritty.

To burn one pound of fat, you need to burn an additional 3500 calories on top of what your body burns at rest. To do so, this is usually done between reducing the calories you eat and completing cardiovascular work to burn extra calories. Now, I do want to share very quickly that this 3500 number isn’t hard and fast. What I mean by that is your body is going to burn a different amount than mine. But for the purpose of this article, its a great starting point.

To continue my point about burning calories, it can be misleading using cardiovascular work as a means to create a calorie deficit. What do I mean by that?

1. It can create a negative association with food and exercise.

2. Calories burned through exercise are usually exaggerated and not accurate.

3. What happens when you hit your goal weight while using cardiovascular exercise as a means to create a caloric deficit? Do you want to maintain the quantity of cardiovascular exercise for the rest of your life? Reflect on this question because the answer could be yes or no. But its going to differ based on where you are at with your current goals and body composition.

So let’s say you want to lose 10 pounds. You would want to then burn 35,000 extra calories (that’s from multiplying 10 by 3500). Divide 35,000 by 30. That equals roughly 1,167. This means you would need to burn an EXTRA 1,167 calories EACH day to lose 10 pounds in one month. I will say this- losing about 2 pounds a week is a good goal to have but also challenging. As you can see from the math above, the caloric deficit needed to lose that amount of weight in the time frame of a month is pretty substantial. Impossible? No. Just challenging.

If you want to lose this amount of weight quickly, I would advise you to use cardiovascular work to help get to a higher caloric deficit. However, I again want you to think about the 3 bullet points I spoke about earlier. It’s important that we aren’t making huge sacrifices in the short term that could lead to more detrimental effects in the long term. And I am specifically talking about your relationship with food and exercise. I start getting concerned when friends start to use exercise as punishment for eating habits or restrict food solely because a workout was missed. Losing weight fast with these underlying concerns is a big red flag for progress.

Personally, there are definitely some disordered habits or thoughts I struggle with when it comes to eating. The two I mostly struggle with are having a negative association with a feeling of fullness and eating enough when I skip a workout. At one point, I would use exercise as a means to compensate for my perception of poor eating habits. I would hold myself to rigid unattainable expectations when I felt as though I failed. I would put way too much emphasis on how I looked and the number on the scale. Once I shifted my focus from aesthetics to performance/skill goals it made a huge difference in my outlook on training and how I felt about myself.

Lastly, I want to briefly speak about strength training as a tool to lose weight. Strictly speaking calories in versus calories out, strength training isn’t going to make a big difference. However, once you start building muscle, your body will burn more calories at rest. This is why strength training is such a big deal in terms of weight loss- you aren’t having to do any extra work at rest to burn more calories. It’s a win-win! Furthermore, when you start on a calorie deficit to lose weight, your body isn’t going to pick fat and choose to use that as fuel. Its going to be a mixture of muscle and fat- this is another reason why strength training is so important. I want you to lose fat while maintaining as much muscle as possible.

I hope this article brings some clarification to losing weight and how best to do so. I want to applaud you for reading this far. Please let me know if there is anything I can do to help support you!

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Get rid of mommy pouch/pooch with these 3 steps

So you dedicate your body to 9 months of growing another human being (which is no small feat) and after the birth of your baby its nothing but sunshine and rainbows. Am I right?!

Ok, no, not really. There are BIG adjustments happening. Not only are you welcoming another human in this world, that completely depends on you, you also have a body that is recovering and looks a bit different than before. It might also act a bit different too. For example, do you pee a little bit when you sneeze? Do you have a general heavy feeling ::down there::? Are you constipated or have low back pain? All of these things are COMMON, but not NORMAL. And I don’t want you to read this and think there is something wrong with you. What I want you to read is that these concerns should not be taken lightly and there are simple exercises you can do to help with these symptoms. These are all signs of pelvic floor dysfunction.

After the birth of my first child, I started to sneeze & pee. It was pretty annoying for me. And I felt as though when I focused on controlling it, it was really uncomfortable. I am not sure how to word it, but it was super frustrating when I was fairly active and considered myself to have pretty strong core muscles.

Then, while having a dead hang competition off a pull-up bar with my husband one night, I felt a tiny pop happen above my belly button. Cue the umbilical hernia. This should have been my big warning flag that my core was not that strong. And at this point, I had not even considered strengthening my pelvic floor. I didn't realize that was a thing. So now reflecting back, my core was weak AND my pelvic floor was weak.

What exactly is pelvic floor dysfunction (PFD)? According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), “a PFD occurs when the muscles or connective tissues of the pelvic area weaken or are injured.” Different things can cause PFD, such a childbirth, certain surgeries, or old age. Unfortunately, not all PFDs can be corrected without surgery. However, many can! And that’s where I want to help you!

You might be asking, but Kristen, I’m on this page because of my mommy pouch/pooch. Not because of some dysfunction. Well, sometimes there is a bigger underlying reason why you might have a pouch/pooch. And if any of the above sounds like you, I want to get to the root cause, rather than place a band-aid on the boo boo. When I start getting into my tips below, regardless if you have PFD, each tip will help reduce the appearance of the mommy pouch/pooch.

And if you do have a PFD, I would highly advise you to work with a local Physical Therapist who specializes in Pelvic Floor work. Another great resource is the Birth Recovery Center by Nancy Anderson. I have no benefit from providing you the last resource- I personally used the Birth Recovery Center after the birth of my third child and found it to be very informative and helpful as I navigated postpartum life, especially with it being my first c-section. The Birth Recovery Center also offered other resources such as a baby sleeping course and mental health resources. I wish I had this resource with my first and second child as the center streamlined so much information for new mothers.

At what point would you actually need to see a Physical Therapist? According to Regional One Health, the oldest hospital system in Tennessee, “if you’re experiencing symptoms like urinary dysfunction, constipation and pelvic pain, it might be time to see a pelvic floor physical therapist.”

Back to the whole point of this article- my three tips to help with mommy pouch/pooch.

1. You most likely have some fat to lose. A calorie deficit is needed to lose the extra weight. Aim for a reduction in 10-20% of your maintenance calories. Not sure how many calories you should be consuming? Take a look at my e-book for weight loss below which includes how to calculate how many calories you should be eating each day.

Free E-Book for Fat Loss

2. Focus on strengthening your core and pelvic floor. Below is a list of exercises you can complete to help. You can click on each to send you to a demo/tutorial.

• Heel Slides

• Heel Marches

• Side Planks

• Dead Bugs

• Belly Breathing

• TVA Activation Exercises

• Pelvic Floor Exercise
  

I created a short routine you can include daily or every other day. I would suggest completing the exercises right before bed so you do not forget to do them!

The Best Ab Routine You Can Find On This Page :)

3. Release the Glutes

Without realizing it, you might be clenching your glutes when you are standing, instead of using your core to stabilize yourself. So, try to be cognizant about your abs and glutes when standing. Don’t get confused though- your glutes will be working to stand. However, you might notice that you are actually clenching and squeezing your glutes without even realizing it. I most notice this when I am in the kitchen cooking and cleaning or when I am changing a diaper for my baby.

If you want to geek out on anatomy and a more thorough explanation of your pelvic floor and why you glute clench, check this article out.

So, to recap. How to get rid of the mommy pooch/pouch?

1. Get cleared for exercise from your doctor first and look into a Physical Therapist who specializes in Pelvic Floor work.

2. Work on strengthening your pelvic floor and core.

3. Train yourself to release your glutes, if that is a concern.

Did you find this article helpful? If so, please follow my instagram @activekristen for free tips on exercise and nutrition.

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References:

https://www.nichd.nih.gov/health/topics/pelvicfloor

https://www.regionalonehealth.org/blog/2020/01/27/ask-the-experts-when-should-i-see-a-pelvic-floor-therapist-and-what-can-i-expect/