Weight Loss advice

Weight loss seems to be one of the most difficult things for us to do. On this site I intend to give practical advice and encouragement to those attempting to lose weight.

I know that alot of you are trying to lose weight and you are constantly being bombarded with advice of all kinds. Well I have some practical advice that comes from what I have learned from my Marine Corps experience. I know this will sound overly simplistic, but I have found that all you really need to get in shape is the ground and a good diet.

When I say all you need is the ground, I of course mean that you don't need an expensive gym membership to exersice. I spend most of my exercise time running, not that I like running but I do find it reletively easy to just go for a run at a moments notice. Push ups and sit ups/crunches round out the basic regimine for impromptu exersice.

For diet, I don't mean eating only lettuce and cottage cheese. When I joined the Marine Corps, for the first week and a half of training I thought we were eating too much. When the exercises became more intense, I was craving more calories. We were not eating light meals, we were fed bacon, eggs, mashed potatos, meat loaf etc. What is more important is wahat we were not allowed to eat, fries, soft drinks, ice cream, cheese burgers, hot dogs, etc. See a pattern?

Now, I understand that not many of us can work out like we are in boot camp, there just isn't time. Many of us don't have the time to cook all of our meals either, but I think we can see from the examples above, that what we need to do is control our intake of certain foods and increase the amount of exercise we get.

Now, I'm not saying that over the years I haven't tried different programs to lose weight, but I now know that if you have the time and a little motivation you will only need diet and exercise. Three to five hours a week should be good in combination with cutting out soda, deserts and fast food to some extent.