How to Lose Weight in a Week

Do you want to lose weight in a week? If you have a wedding or special occasion to attend then you will want to lose weight quickly and healthily.

Depending on your current body weight it may be possible to lose up to 20 pounds in a single week. However, such a drastic drop in pounds will usually only affect an obese individual. It is not recommended to try and lose more 1-2 pounds each week.

Extreme Weight Loss

The American Council on Exercise suggest that rapid weight loss of 10 to 20 pounds per week is possible, however, it should be noted that this weight loss is extremely unlikely to be permanent. Such rapid weight loss can be achieved through fad diets such as severely limiting your food choices or soup-based diets. Rapid weight loss can also occur through consuming less than 800 calories per day. While this might work in the very short term, most of the weight you lose while on crash diets consists of losing water from your system and the loss of lean tissue. Any weight you do lose in this manner is likely to be put back on the instant you begin to return to a normal diet.

Dangers of rapid weight loss

Fad diets will usually not provide your body with all the nutrients you need. According to the Weight-control Information Network if you lose more than 3 pounds per week after the first couple of weeks dieting then your risk of developing gallstones greatly increases. If you are on a diet where you eat less than 800 calories a day this could result in heart rhythm abnormalities in the future.

Healthy weekly weight loss

The healthiest method of losing weight is to burn off more calories than you consume. The average woman uses around 2,000 to 2,100 calories a day and the average man uses around 2,700 to 2,900 per day. With that in mind, the easiest way of losing weight is to eat less and exercise more. While this isn’t a startling revelation in itself, in order to lose weight you will need to change the way you approach food and exercise.

If you want to lose weight in a healthy manner then it is recommended that you take longer than week to implement a healthy diet. This is because weight loss is highly dependent on a number of different factors. Your age, gender and body weight all impact how fast you are likely to lose weight. An average woman weighing around 140 pounds is likely to lose around 1 to 1.5 pounds per week.

If you reduce your daily energy intake to around 500 calories (kcal) below your energy requirements, you’ll lose about 0.5kg (1lb) a week. This is a sensible rate of weight loss.

Set achievable weight loss goals

If you want to keep the weight off then you’ll need to change your diet and the amount of physical activity you do. Keeping a food diary is a useful way to help you better identify why and when you eat the foods that you do.

While fast weight loss is achievable over the course of week, it is far more beneficial to make gradual changes to your diet in order to maintain the amount of weight you lose.
If you try to make too many drastic changes to your diet too quickly then it is unlikely that you will be able to maintain your new lifestyle choices. It is possible to lose five to ten percent of your initial body weight over the course of a few months. Remember that you might not lose weight every single week, but taking small positive steps to losing weight will be far more beneficial to your health in the long run that simply losing weight over a very short period of time.