Weight loss help

Question
I am a 5'1 about 240 pound woman who can't seem to lose weight. I got off of pop and lost over 50 pounds but gained it all back even when I was still off pop, excercising, and eating healthy. I have been around this weight for about 5 years. It has also never been over 250. Always when I lose it, it slowly goes back up to my original weight when I do so much work to keep it down and lose more. Is there any way to keep off the weight. Please help.

Answer
Hi Jessica,
It is really hard to say without knowing all the specifics but I can give some general ideas and hope that helps.  First I would address your diet.  The best thing to do is to keep a food and drink journal.  Their are several websites you can use to look up calorie information such as sharecare or livestrong.  This gets a little tricky because you have to be very specific about serving sizes.  Many restaurants may have some menu items that appear to be healthy being that it is something grilled and it comes with veggies but sometimes either the size is way more than you should be eating or even though it is grilled it may have a very high calorie sauce or many vegetables are covered in a lot of butter or oil.  Most restaurants have either a nutrition guide on their website with calories of each dish or you can look it up on the internet.  Also many restaurant salads can be over 800 calories so you really have to be careful and find out the calorie information.  Many people tend to forget about drinks such as sweet tea or lemonade as that can add a lot of calories without realizing it.  Also, alcohol is another item people tend not to count to their daily calories.  Another thing to look at would be the exercises.  What kind you are doing, how long are you doing it and how vigorous are the workouts.  I would recommend doing both cardio and strength training exercises.  Strength training is very important.  Building muscle helps burn more calories.  The more muscles you have the more calories you burn.  Some women are very weary of doing strength training as they fear they will bulk up and look manly but that is just not true unless you are lifting extremely heavy weights 3 or more hours a day.  But you also need cardio.  I would recommend 3-4 days of each type of exercises such as total body strength training exercises 3 days a week and cardio (such as aerobics or jogging, etc.) 3-4 days per week.  Start with 30 minutes of each and work up to an hour each.  You need to burn 3500 calories to lose one pound.  You need to burn more calories than you are eating so that is where the food journal comes in.  If you eat 1500 calories and your body burns about 1200 with normal day to day activities then you need to burn 300 calories in exercise just to maintain your weight and more than 300 to start losing.  I hope this makes sense to you and I hope it helps.  Good luck!
PS That is great that you gave up pop!

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