To lose weight you must do two things, practice good nutrition and make time to exercise. Without the proper nutrition your chances of experiencing successful long term weight loss is dramatically reduced. Let's make sure we understand one fact, crash diets do not qualify as proper nutrition.
Proper nutrition means you are consuming healthy, balanced, and well-rounded meals. It means you are practicing portion control, understanding how many calories you need to eat to experience weight loss and still be healthy, and limiting your intake of sweets. Current wisdom says that if you can create a daily 500
calorie deficit you will lose weight. That calorie deficit is achieved by exercise and meal planning. If you do this you can lose approximately one pound a week. One pound a week may seem inadequate but think of what you are doing. You are making huge changes in your life; you are changing what you eat, when you eat, and how you eat. That is a lot to undertake and losing one pound a week is the type of weight loss that you can sustain over a long period of time. Simply put, if you can lose one pound a week you will lose 52 lbs. in one year. Now that is an incredible accomplishment.