It has been a while since my last entry. Over the past month, I've been studying for IT exams, and regrettably that has taken up a great deal of time. Now, this has passed, so I look forward to continuing my weight loss blog, which I hope has helped at least some people who have read it. If all goes well, next week I should resume my weekly entries on topics and that I found to help me with my weight loss. Stay tuned...

My biggest period of my weight loss was during my first six weeks. During those weeks, I was losing six pounds each week. I refer to it now as my "first six weeks plan", but my plan actually called upon me to carry out this program until I reached my target weight. If interested, you can read my journal about my plan here on my website. However, on the seventh week of this plan, I lost two pounds, which is still a respectable loss, but I was still aggressive, and I still had 40 to 50 pounds to go. But since what I was doing was no longer working I needed to come up with a new plan, which I will be sharing in future entries. Anyway, my program required me to start off with doing cardio twice a day, initially at 30 minutes each. I would increase each session by 10 minutes each week until I hit 90 each session, which I would continue until I reached my target weight. I already had been doing cardio, so I was in decent shape. Thrown in would be 3 sessions of full body workouts consisting of compound exercises. My diet would consist of about 1600 calories, proteins being the largest macronutrient. I allowed a cheat day, but after the first two weeks I was so pleased with the results I dropped them. But, when it did not affect the outcome, I resumed them. The execution did not go nearly as good as planned, but the beauty was I still lost the weight.

Please read more about my first six week plan:
http://www.obesetoathletic.com/6week...
and other ways I used to lose weight, please visit my site:
http://www.obesetoathletic.com/defau...

I'm going to digress a little and explain why I love to hate deadlifts. Deadlifts, for those not familiar with them, are a compound exercise that works most of the muscles in the lower body and midsection, especially the lower back muscles. One takes the weight usually from the ground, while bent over, and lifts it to about waist level. So how does performing deadlifts help with weight loss? First, because so many muscles are being trained, overall body development is being improved upon. This will help you with your posture, and I have noticed it helps me doing cardio exercises longer and more intensely. In addition, because deadlifts workout so many muscles, you will burn a significant amount of calories, further as those muscles grow, you will continue to burn a significant amount of calories. I have also noticed improvements in my back as well. Any weight loss plan will greatly benefit by incorporating deadlifts. However one must be cautious when performing deadlifts. Deadlifts done with incorrect form or too much weight can cause serious and permanent injury. This video shows the correct form in performing deadlifts:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqxim...
I also found a video that shows a bad form:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQ2gX...
However, if you have not done deadlifts before, I highly recommend you have a personal trainer demonstrate the correct form and critique your form before starting deadlifts.
So if deadlifts are so good, why would I hate them? Well, for all the benefit they give me, they are a major pain to perform. Even so, performing deadlifts was the smartest fitness move I made – but you would never think so watching me do them.

For more ways to lose weight and weight loss plans that helped me lose 80 pounds in 4 months, please check out my site:
http://www.obesetoathletic.com/
http://www.squidoo.com/fromobesetoat...
http://hubpages.com/hub/My-4-month-8...