Weight Reduction

Question
Sir,

I am asking this question on behalf of my friend about weight reduction.
She is 23 yrs old and has gained little extra weight and want to shed fat.

She has started jogging as only jogging is possible due to few constraints and I feel is best, can you suggest something as what should be the duration (also speed of running) for jogging, and is it ok to do it on paved road.
Diet suggestions also..
She is 54 kgs and has no other health problems.

I am expecting a detailed answer from you as she dont listen to my advices (generally) hope she will listen to someone who is an expert with lots of experience.

Thanks
Talha Khan

Answer
You didn't indicate your friend's height, so there is no way for me to know what a healthy weight range for her is.  But I can give you some advice on running and weight loss.

First of all, a successful weight loss program requires both diet and exercise.  So let's talk about diet first.  Your friend needs to devise a healthy diet that will help her to lose weight.  Dieting, however, does not mean simply eating less food.  A proper diet provides a healthy balance of protein, carbohydrates, and fat, and is not too calorically deficient.

The best way for anyone to start developing a diet plan is to compute their total daily energy expenditure (TDEE).  There are many websites that allow you to compute your TDEE for free.  Your TDEE represents the number of calories you need to eat in order to maintain your current weight.  Eating more calories will result in weight gain, while eating less will result in weight loss.

A good weight loss strategy is to eat 80% of your TDEE.  Do not eat less than 80% - if you do you are likely will lose both lean muscle and fat, which is never good.  Ideally, you want to only lose fat tissue, which requires a more conservative approach.  Many people have no idea how many calories they eat in a day, so I advise purchasing a small kitchen scale and journal to track what you eat (a food journal).  Write down everything you eat in the journal.  If you are eating a pre-packaged food, you can use the packaging label to write down the listed calories, protein, fat, and carbs in your journal.  If you eating something like a piece of fruit, weigh it and write down the amount in the journal.  At the end of the day, you can look up online the calories for items that didn't have food labels.  Although tracking everything so closely is a nuisance to do, it makes you very aware of everything you eat in a day.  Also, over time, you will be able to visually estimate calories based on portion size, which is an important life skill.  Once this happens, keeping a food journal is usually no longer required.  Finally, how else are you going to know if you are eating 80% of your TDEE if you are not tracking the calories you eat?

Most diets fall into one of two camps : low fat or low protein.  A low fat diet involves eating lots of lean protein and complex carbohydrates, such as beans and whole grains.  A low protein diet, by contrast, involves eating very few carbohydrates of any kind, and instead relying on protein and fat.  Both diets work.  In either case, you should avoid refined carbohydrates (flours and sugars) and starchy vegetables such as potatoes, rice, etc., as these make it difficult to lose weight.

Now, on to exercise.  Running is a low-intensity cardiovascular exercise than can be performed for long periods of time.  This makes it great for burning lots of calories - ideal if you want to lose weight.  I would add, however, that good physical fitness also involves developing strength, which is not accomplished through running alone.  Strength development requires short-burst, high-intensity anaerobic exercise, such as lifting weights, high intensity interval training, etc.  Many of these exercises also promote flexibility, another key component of physical fitness.

You asked about duration and speed of running.  These two things are very specific to each person.  They also vary greatly over time, because as someone becomes more physically fit, they can run faster and/or farther.  For someone just starting out, just getting outside and going running every other day is the key thing to promote.  I would not worry about speed and distance at this stage - focus on the amount of time they spend exercising.  A modest target would be 20 minutes for someone who is out of shape.  If your friend can do more than this, then she should.

A person who has not run before may find it difficult to run for more than a few minutes before they feel out of breath.  If this happens, they should stop running (but keep walking) until they catch their breath.  Once recovered, they should then start running again.  In this manner, a person may "run" a mile or two, even though they are actually doing a mixture of running and walking.  As the person becomes more fit, their need to walk will diminish.  Eventually, the person will be able to run without stopping.

Paved roads are perfectly fine to run on.  I will admit that there are some in the running community who feel that natural surfaces like dirt and grass are better.  But the fact is that the vast majority of runners rely on paved surfaces for running.  For all the years I've been running, most of the time it was on paved surfaces, and I do not feel that they are inferior to natural surfaces.