Don't Cut Too Many Calories Too Fast!

Avoid drastically cutting your calories. Quick and drastic weight loss can cause issues with your body's metabolism and muscle mass. When you lose a lot of weight quickly, you really need to strictly monitor where the weight is coming from. Is it water weight, body fat or muscle mass? The majority of the time, it unfortunately comes from lean muscle mass and this is exactly what causes serious issues with your metabolism. Muscle is your body's most potent and active tissue for burning calories and body fat. It's basically your body's "furnace" and you always want to keep it burning hot. When someone loses a lot of weight, which usually comes from crash dieting or some other unhealthy way of dropping the weight, the body's lean muscle mass is cannibalized and the person loses some of the most powerful tissue for keeping a lean body.

To take off one pound per week, you'll need to reduce calories by 500 per day. (one pound of body fat equals about 3,500 calories.) Try eating 250 calories less per day and exercising enough to burn 250 calories, like walking about 2.5 miles each day. The easiest way to cut back on calories is to watch your portion sizes.