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[Ikuko_Ieyasu]

Okay, I cosplay a bit, but still fairly new to it. I'd like to get in shape and lose my tummy/leg fat. The problem is, I have a busy schedule with many homework assignments, projects, etc. I can work out for, like 15 minutes before I go to bed. I wouldn't run in place though, I do plenty of running at school already and maybe joining the track team in the spring. Would doing planks and squats tone down my tummy and legs? I'm kinda more worried on the tummy though because I can barely fit my Kaito cosplay's pants. o.o"

[pandagilbirds]

It's been about a month since I started my diet.

Drink at least 2 liters of water everyday.
This is really important. Although you may not even have the time to work out, drinking 2 liters will help you lose at least 2kg in a month. That's from experience. I didn't shave off the pizza and hamburgers or do any workout but I still lost up to 4kg just from drinking 2 liters of water. Besides, drinking water is good for your skin...makes it softer. =w= If you're interested in diet, you would have heard about metabolism, speeding up your digestive cycle with requires energy usage making you lose weight. I for one was born with a slow metabolic body. ;A; To increase it, I drank a warm or cold cup of green tea in the morning. Trust me on this. NOT GREEN TEA FRAP. Also, drinking cold water is more beneficial to increasing your metabolism so fill that bottle with cold water because you're body will work hard to keep homeostasis. Awwwww yeaaaaaaaaaaa.

How do you know you drank 2 liters? I used to carry around this filled with water (the one on the left) but it looked really gaudy and too big to carry around. So now I fill up the Dasani bottle 3~4 times each day. It's better because you have to walk to a water source to fill it up. If you can't find either, then an average soda bottle should have the amount of liquid it can hold. Average is 1 ~ 1.5 liters.

I NEED TO LOSE WEIGHT FASTER THAN JUST 3KG A MONTH?!!!??!
I'm started some aerobic dance thing you can find here. It works well and it's fun...as long as you don't mind doing it.

To keep a healthy diet, you are better off eating 6 meals a day but that's mostly when you are stabilized. When I say 6 meals, I meant 3 proper meals and 3 snacks. It stabilized your metabolic rate. A healthy diet schedule is usually:

Breakfast 7 AM---------------------Biggest meal
Snack 10 AM
Lunch 12 PM---------------------Enough for Satisfaction (Second Big)
Snack 3 PM
Dinner 5 PM---------------------Just Enough So You Don't Die of Hunger (Small)
Snack 7 PM

The last snack depends on when you go to sleep. Although teenagers use energy for hormonal purposes during the night, it doesn't use much energy for digestion thus, slowing your metabolism. Eat the last snack of the day about 3 hours before you go to sleep.

Though, to lose weight fast, it's better just to skip the snacks for now. While small portion of fats and oil is okay, cut down the chips and cakes. Those are basically what the yellow mush in your body are.

Good luck.

[Ikuko_Ieyasu]

Originally Posted by pandagilbirds

It's been about a month since I started my diet.

Drink at least 2 liters of water everyday.
This is really important. Although you may not even have the time to work out, drinking 2 liters will help you lose at least 2kg in a month. That's from experience. I didn't shave off the pizza and hamburgers or do any workout but I still lost up to 4kg just from drinking 2 liters of water. Besides, drinking water is good for your skin...makes it softer. =w= If you're interested in diet, you would have heard about metabolism, speeding up your digestive cycle with requires energy usage making you lose weight. I for one was born with a slow metabolic body. ;A; To increase it, I drank a warm or cold cup of green tea in the morning. Trust me on this. NOT GREEN TEA FRAP. Also, drinking cold water is more beneficial to increasing your metabolism so fill that bottle with cold water because you're body will work hard to keep homeostasis. Awwwww yeaaaaaaaaaaa.

How do you know you drank 2 liters? I used to carry around this filled with water (the one on the left) but it looked really gaudy and too big to carry around. So now I fill up the Dasani bottle 3~4 times each day. It's better because you have to walk to a water source to fill it up. If you can't find either, then an average soda bottle should have the amount of liquid it can hold. Average is 1 ~ 1.5 liters.

I NEED TO LOSE WEIGHT FASTER THAN JUST 3KG A MONTH?!!!??!
I'm started some aerobic dance thing you can find here. It works well and it's fun...as long as you don't mind doing it.

Good luck.

Wow! Thank you very much! I've been told by my doctor I need to drink more water anyways, due to my frequent headaches.

[Kaliza]

Basically to lose fat you need to lose weight= burn more calories and/or eat less. To tone up you need to do things to strengthen muscles. The problem is when you lose weight some of it tends to be muscle as well so you probably need to work on both cardio and strength training if you also want to tone(build muscle), so the best thing would probably be to alternate days between the two. Or try to do things that help with both. Usually it is better to not do the same exercises every day.
You can find websites online that will give you fitness plans, with suggestions for exercises to do. For example I use Sparkpeople but there are a lot of others also. They have videos and descriptions to show you how to do different exercises and things. They will also give you a nutrition plan if you want.
If you use Spark there are also different teams you can join for different goals, some of which have their own fitness plans, for example this one has 10 minute videos that you can follow along with for a workout:
http://www.sparkpeople.com/resource/...es.asp?id=1699
http://www.sparkpeople.com/resource/...asp?category=2

[Arbite]

Originally Posted by pandagilbirds

It's been about a month since I started my diet.

Drink at least 2 liters of water everyday.
This is really important. Although you may not even have the time to work out, drinking 2 liters will help you lose at least 2kg in a month. That's from experience. I didn't shave off the pizza and hamburgers or do any workout but I still lost up to 4kg just from drinking 2 liters of water. Besides, drinking water is good for your skin...makes it softer. =w= If you're interested in diet, you would have heard about metabolism, speeding up your digestive cycle with requires energy usage making you lose weight. I for one was born with a slow metabolic body. ;A; To increase it, I drank a warm or cold cup of green tea in the morning. Trust me on this. NOT GREEN TEA FRAP. Also, drinking cold water is more beneficial to increasing your metabolism so fill that bottle with cold water because you're body will work hard to keep homeostasis. Awwwww yeaaaaaaaaaaa.

How do you know you drank 2 liters? I used to carry around this filled with water (the one on the left) but it looked really gaudy and too big to carry around. So now I fill up the Dasani bottle 3~4 times each day. It's better because you have to walk to a water source to fill it up. If you can't find either, then an average soda bottle should have the amount of liquid it can hold. Average is 1 ~ 1.5 liters.

I NEED TO LOSE WEIGHT FASTER THAN JUST 3KG A MONTH?!!!??!
I'm started some aerobic dance thing you can find here. It works well and it's fun...as long as you don't mind doing it.

Good luck.

The amount of calories burned by drinking cold water are almost negligible. Being dehydrated lowers your basal metabolic rate anyway, so simply drinking two litres a day will help keep it running. Meal timing is also a myth. True, your metabolism speeds up when you eat. But its speed is also dependent on how much you eat, balancing it out.

[pandagilbirds]

Originally Posted by Arbite

The amount of calories burned by drinking cold water are almost negligible. Being dehydrated lowers your basal metabolic rate anyway, so simply drinking two litres a day will help keep it running. Meal timing is also a myth. True, your metabolism speeds up when you eat. But its speed is also dependent on how much you eat, balancing it out.

It's true. To keep a healthy diet, you are better off eating 6 meals a day but that's mostly when you are stabilized. When I say 6 meals, I meant 3 proper meals and 3 snacks. It stabilized your metabolic rate. A healthy diet schedule is usually:

Breakfast 7 AM---------------------Biggest meal
Snack 10 AM
Lunch 12 PM---------------------Enough for Satisfaction (Second Big)
Snack 3 PM
Dinner 5 PM---------------------Just Enough So You Don't Die of Hunger (Small)
Snack 7 PM

The last snack depends on when you go to sleep. Although teenagers use energy for hormonal purposes during the night, it doesn't use much energy for digestion thus, slowing your metabolism. Eat the last snack of the day about 3 hours before you go to sleep.

Though, to lose weight fast, it's better just to skip the snacks for now. While small portion of fats and oil is okay, cut down the chips and cakes. Those are basically what the yellow mush in your body are.

((*I'm going to add this to the original reply))

[Arti]

I hate to run around dropping knowledge bombs but that eating model greately resembles the classic "breakfast like a king, lunch like a queen, dinner like a pauper", where the idea of having less food before bedtime will result in less fat gain from the slowed digestion. But generally it's all a myth.

A lot of the misconception comes from the bad diets that do involve the latter, where an overabundance of processed food leads to unnecessary snacking, especially in the later evenings. If the same idea was done but in a more healthy manner (ie get rid of the junk and actually eat a decent full dinner), then the results would be different due to the overall nutrient composition (ie more protein)

Multiple Studies, like this one have shown greater weight loss and hormonal results when Carbs are consumed later in the day, rather than before. With multiple studies based around switching around calories, it seems that more calories later in the day benefits more than calories consumed before breaking the fast.

A few means of reasoning is that:

• a late meal, which should be rich in proteins, combined with the increased hormones produced during sleep (Growth Hormone to be exact) provides a sufficient way to provide maximal recovery during rest via protein synthesis (also a muscle sparring effect)
  
  
• The boost in leptin from the increased carb intake later in the day carries over during sleep, providing satiety throughout the sleep, and reducing hunger in the waking hours.(source)

And for meal frequency. It does not matter how many meals one takes, as meal frequency and metabolism are insignificant, given the calories consumed are constant. Some people like 6 meals (yes I include snacks--anything involving putting food into your mouth in a periodic manner is a meal) over 3 meals because they can adhere better, some just like 3 meals for bigger meals that make them for better satiety (ie, when you snack, it's likely that your body has adjusted to eating at that time from ghrelin, or you haven't ate enough from your previous meal), but as for increasing meal frequency just to regulate metabolism in any way is just fruitless.

Finally, weight loss should NOT be a race. Focus more on your workouts, and your eating. You know that it's working when you're progressing on your workouts, and your eating habits consists of less processed food (70% of the time it's junk food that sits alongside the pantry isles, the other 30% is bread)

[DowagerAtWork]

Eventually you're going to need to learn to carve out more time for exercise. It may seem difficult, but it's a habit that's worth learning.

As for the exercise, there are a lot of 10 minute solution videos. I enjoy them, and there is plenty of variety. Mix 'em up.

Also, start weeding out the junk in your diet.

[noogz256]

no such thing as an exercise that "tones". not to be crass or blunt but gotta lose that fat. eat a little less, weight train, and do HIIT. if you are really busy just do HIIT. it takes about 15 minutes to do but it will kick some butt! XD

[nilukshi]

all you need is a few mins workout and a low calorie diet. start with running and skipping rope .