weight loss using exercise

I just find that exercise makes you feel one billion times better. And weight loss comes naturally with it.
I find it quite easy to stick to my exercise regime at the minute because I have worked it in perfectly with my life!
Good luck on weight loss and your half marathons, especially the fact you do it for charity! And remember that walking is actually an incredible form of exercise and is easy to do. Burns so many calories without hardly noticing!
xx

For permanent weight loss, you need to change the lifestyle and not just "diet". If you are eating 1200 cals, you may even go to 1300 or even to 1350 but make that your lifestyle for ever and not for a week or for a month.

To make that happen, you need to work more at psychological level first. You need to convince yourself why it's so important for reduce weight and what will go wrong in your life if you don;t reduce weight. YOU need to tell that to yourself every morning when you get up and need to do that for 3-6 months till the habit is set for ever.

Try to consciously look for food items that you like but have low calories (or ca be made using low calories just by lowering their oil content etc.). I don't know which country are you from; however if you are an Indian then lots of good Indian food items taste equally well even if you reduce oil content in it by 80%! It just requires a bit of practice to get used to new taste. If you do such things consciously, then you will be able to have 1200-1300 cals food daily for next 15 years and that will ensure on-going weight reduction till you achieve your desired goal.

With regard to walk, it's also important to track the speed. It should be at least 6 kmph for good calories burn. Exercise should also become a habit. By not doing exercise, one should feel as if one has not eaten food! This too calls for psychological exercises to make it happen.

Yeah I definitely wouldn't be able to last on 1200 calories. I would be a grumpy beast. I think your plan sounds good, but just remember that it's pretty easy to out-eat exercise. Jillian Michaels gives the example in one of her DVDs that 2 slices of pizza cancels out that DVD. Even if you set your weight loss to half a pound per week will ensure that you'll lose. That's what I do. I've lost weight slowly, but I also have pizza, ice cream, etc. when I really want it.

I lost weight while eating ice cream and Weinerschnitzel.

Have a look at this website: www.fat2fitradio.com and listen to the audio clip about the fat loss philosophy they adopt - in a nut shell it is "Eat like the thinner person you want to be"

You use their site calculators to work out how many calories you would eat at your goal weight, and start eating that amount now. I think it really is a good way to go.

Good luck.

Weight loss is really achieved by diet. As an earlier poster said, it's very easy to eat back the calories burned by exercise. If you stick to your plan, which, as I understand it, is eating at maintenance, you probably won't lose much weight. Regardless, you will be healthier overall if you start exercising, and, if you follow a good weights routine, you'll probably get a lot firmer.

Personally, I'd just set a more reasonable caloric deficit into the diet. MFP only gives you 1,200 calories because of your inputs...probably 2 Lbs per week loss. Why not set it to 1 Lb per week loss or even .5 Lbs per week loss. Conversely, you could customize your goals using the TDEE method as I and many others do.

People that I've known who have tried to lose weight by eating a maintenance level of calories and just working them off have generally failed. Things happen that prevent people from sticking 100% to their fitness routine...something comes up at work that prevents you from doing what you need to do for a couple of days...kids get sick...you get sick...injury occurs that knocks you out of the game for a couple of weeks, etc.

Not to mention, just to lose 1 Lb per week would mean that your workouts would have to burn 3,500 calories in a week...that's some pretty intense training and not sustainable for a lot of people, particularly when you take into account rest days and trading off intense WO days with less intense WO days for recovery. I have a pretty darned good 6x per week routine that combines some good cardio with weight training and I can tell you that I only burn about 1,700-2,000 calories per week on average...that's 3 days worth of HIIT for 30 minutes, 1 day of endurance run for 30-45 minutes, 2 days of low intensity cardio in the fat burn/heart health zone for 30-45 min, and 3x weekly lifting heavy.

Personally, I believe in diet (as a noun) to control weight and exercise for fitness, cardiovascular health, endurance, and strength. My fitness goals have very little to do with my weight loss goals.