Published on March 18th, 2010.

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I answer questions for a living. I design websites for a living, too. This is all done from home. As you can imagine, I don't have to get exercise. I'm not even much of an exerciser, but yet I stay thin. A question I get asked a lot is, "how do I lose x pounds in x days" or "what's the best way to lose weight?". Well, I'm going to tell you.

There's some mad scientists out there who are going to tell you things like to only watch your saturated fat vs. calories, fat vs. saturated fat, or that calories simply don't matter one bit. Just do that, then you'll "lose weight"! These people are probably paid bloggers. Use your common sense: there's a lot of things that are going to make you fat, and while lowering caloric intake is one way to lose weight, you should actually be focusing on losing body fat. People are attracted to weight usually because they have more fat than muscle and prioritize losing the fat. The important stats in food are caloric content, how much of that is from fat, and how much actual fat is in there. Now let's go over the quintessential idea of serving size.

Serving size is key to knowing just how bad those Cheez-its are. You could not really believe there's only 160 calories in that whole box, could you? No, they show you serving size based on 27 crackers. There may be an estimated 162 crackers in that box, and suddenly you have stuffed 960 calories into your body, while snacking nonetheless, over the course of three days.

Your veins will get full of fat if you eat high-fat food. I cannot stress how unhealthy most fast food is for you. The carbohydrates in spaghetti vs. a Burger King hamburger are simply better for you after factoring in the nutrients you receive. If you want to eat healthier, here's some suggestions: get some grapes. They're awesome to snack on. Get some apples and some cinammon, that's a great 'prepared' snack. Peanut butter and fluff is great for lunch, om nom nom. Pasta's great and easy to make. Lunch meat's fine in moderation. If you really must eat fast food, then choose Wendy's. They are the cheapest and healthiest. (usually, depends on what you order) These are just basic eating tips; there's many more things you should and shouldn't eat, and you can do your own research.

I believe exercising is the more important part of staying fit. By exercising, you build muscle and burn fat. Most people prefer the look of a toned body. So by exercising, you get to look better, feel better, and you even (if you keep up with it) will live a longer, happier life. The only price you pay is 15 minutes a day of discipline-building working out.

Some people like to exercise with the goal of numbers in mind: they'll do x amount of reps for this workout. This is a common conception for working out because it gives you goals to work for, which gives the sense of accomplishment, and it only helps that working out is pretty boring, so you're only spending as much time as you set your goals to. It's not that this doesn't work - because it does - but I don't prefer this method because I think it's half-assing it, old man. You'll have to use your full ass if you want to get fit.

I keep exercising until I'm tired. Don't choose huge weights unless you want to be a manly man. I'm not going around saying how much I can bench press, and it doesn't entirely matter to me, because I don't plan to be lifting heavy boulders off my Barbie doll girlfriend while we're hiking. My reasons for working out are to look good and feel good. Thus I do small weights with many reps, and the key to my fabulous workout is that I stop when I am tired. No numbers in my head, I just keep going until my body is tired of doing it. I work out even when I'm sore, but I admit I am hardly "very sore" in which case working out strenuously could be potentially damaging to the muscle. The soreness you will feel is simply an indication that your muscles are adapting to your regimen.

It's important to work out as many muscles as you can, but not everyone likes working out that much. In this embarassing video, I detail my 'full' workout regimen. This is what Vael Victus actually does.

When I first started working from home, the hardest part was to actually get my arse up to do the things I needed to do, that I didn't exactly want to do. I found that if I just start to do these things anyway, it's not so bad. The same idea applies to working out: even if you're not in the mood, even if you're tired, just go on and do it. Once you start moving your body and begin to see some real improvement on your body, you will be pleased.

Eating healthily is a matter of discipline. You are not an animal, you can control your desire to put things in your mouth. Watching the tendencies of overweight people, I have noticed it is easy for them to justify a snack here or there. Specifically, I was at the mall once with some friends, and we stopped by some smoothie place because the chubby girl 'had to' have one. My two skinny friends got some too, which is fine, because they are skinny, but smoothies are still generally bad for you. The chubby girl passively mentioned that she wanted to be skinnier and beautiful at times, but then there she is, eating this awful stuff. A bit of it is the self-discipline and the other bit is motivation: how badly do you want to look and feel better? When asked if I wanted a smoothie, I said no, because I'll just have some bread and water at home. The temporary pleasure I would receive from drinking the smoothie is not worth the overall effects of the smoothie for me.

Finally, the general rule you should stick to is this: eat healthy, burn it off. I'm going to hit the numpad-9 key now, which I use for work: "The best way to lose weight is to diet and exercise. Take in a good amount of carbs, and then burn that energy. You will gain muscle and your body will become healthier in general. You don't want to lose weight as much as you want to lose body fat." You can use calorie calculators to see how many you 'should' be taking in a day. I don't think you should follow them exactly, but the calculators act as a general guide for what you 'should' be taking in. Going back to numpad-9, eating more ensures that you get your required nutrients, as does eating a variety of food. I take a Flintstones multivitamin daily, because I don't eat many vegetables. (it's kind of like cheating) (but it's good for you so no one cares)

I will share a quick story. I watched my monthly session of television once, it was a show about losing weight. So this guy's like "yeah I quit my job, work online now, and moved to this apartment so I could lose weight!", and he was quite serious. His diet consisted of mostly organic food, and he'd prepare all his meals with a knife. Very clean, and I'm not sure but I think he ate everything but meat... fish included. A vegetarian diet with no exercising. So finally it shows that he can't get this decent amount of blubber off his stomach. Everywhere else he was starting to lose weight, but wasn't really toned. He was kind of like a big sack of soft meat. He decides to spend the next few days trying to get down to his weight goal, so he goes out into the city for a jog. He's doing fine enough, until he gets to some stairs. He gets to the top and he's huffing and puffing. This is because his muscles were weak. The lack of protein and his lack of exercise over six months had slowly turned him into a pathetic sack of meat. The moral of the story is that while you may stay lean from a great diet, with no exercise you will not actually be a fit person.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I just really wanted to make an exercise video. Kidding! In conclusion, you now have a foundation on exercising, how to eat correctly, and how to stay fit after you get that way. Also, after filming, I realized my workout regimen isn't the best if you're not already fit. Well, you don't have to jump. You look silly anyway.

Now you've lost it, you know you can kill,
Vael Victus