To lose ten pounds, you need to burn about 35,000 more calories than you eat. If you ran an entire marathon, you would use about one pound worth of calories. Assuming your legs have the energy to claw their way out of bed the next morning, you’d need to run about ten more of those in the rest of the week, and that’s if you’re only eating about 500 calories per day. This is simply to say that losing ten pounds in a week is basically a physical impossibility.
The best way to lose weight is to slowly adjust your diet while incorporating an exercise routine. But what if you need to drop some weight fast? There are a number of ways to drop weight quickly. Most of them are dangerous to your health, but there are a few ways to do it safely. There are three main areas involved in rapid weight loss. They include your diet, your exercise routine, and then there are some unusual methods.
The first thing that needs to change is the way you eat. Break your meals down into four to six smaller meals a day, with smaller meals coming later in the day. There are a few reasons behind this. Larger meals can often lie undigested in your system, while smaller ones are more easily processed. When you eat, your metabolism speeds up to aid in digestion. In addition, by eating smaller portions but more frequently, you keep your metabolism sped up which, in turn, burns more calories.
Normally, I would encourage dieters to cut their portions down, but since we’re looking at dropping a fair amount of weight rapidly, we’ll skip that and go right to some serious dieting tools. Cut out as much solid food as you can and take in as much fluid as you are able. Fluids are easier to digest and quicker to process. Restrict your diet to low-sodium soups and broths. Salt encourages your body to retain water, by cutting out salt you will retain less water weight. If you can’t do without solid food for a week, drink at least one glass of water before each meal to produce a feeling of fullness. Drinking plenty of fluids will also help remove toxins from your body as well. If you need to drop weight in a hurry, it’s very important to stick as close to this diet as possible.
Still, when procrastination strikes, many dieters find themselves looking for a shortcut solution to weight loss. The ideal weight loss diet will result in a loss of between one and two pounds a week; yet while not the wisest practice, a quick crash diet can trim a few more pounds in the same time frame. If you push yourself, it is possible to lose about five pounds in a week, but it is not to be repeated for weeks at a time as it is both unhealthy and unlikely to yield permanent results.
Drink a lot of water:
Dodge the coffee, toss the soda, and ditch the sugary drinks. If you want to lose weight fast, the only liquid you should be drinking is water (save for a glass of real fruit juice in the morning). Try to drink three or four cups of water more than you would in a typical day. Drinking water rather than other liquids can speed up your metabolism and flush waste out of your system faster
Start your day right:
Try to take a short walk or run in the morning. Beyond the obvious benefit of burning calories and fat, starting your day with a mile or two can get your metabolism going strong early and increase your energy level throughout the day. You will feel better about exercising later and your body will process food more efficiently.
Don’t starve yourself:
While you will want to cut your calories down, don’t take it to the extreme. Beyond the fact that it’s terribly unhealthy to go without eating for days at a time, if you try to lose weight by starving yourself, you will just put the weight right back on as soon as you start eating again. Start your day with a good healthy breakfast and reduce the amount you would typically eat in the afternoon and evening hours. Make dinner the smallest meal of the day and never eat right before going to bed.
Exercise different muscle groups:
If you walk or run a few miles for your exercise on day one, focus your workout on your upper body on day two. Lift weights (with limited weight so that you can perform more repetitions), do abdominal exercises, pushups – anything that allows you to get quality exercise for an extended period of time without overworking any one area. Alternate the type of exercise you are performing from day to day. This will let you exercise at a high level each day by giving your muscle groups recovery time between workouts.
Get a full night of sleep:
A lack of sleep can often be linked to low energy levels and overeating. To keep your cravings down and your energy high, get a full seven to nine hours of sleep per night. With a full night of sleep, you will feel much better than you would if you were under-sleeping and you will aid in your body’s recovery from exercise.
To lose ten pounds in a week is akin to finding the Fountain of Youth, the Loch Ness Monster, and Atlantis. Still, while not the healthy way to lose weight, it is possible to lose as many as five pounds in a week, with the qualifier that you do not make such a goal a permanent lifestyle. Beyond the fact that crash dieting is unhealthy, weight lost in such a fashion rarely stays off because the body needs the time to adjust to weight loss in small increments.
