If you’re interested in losing weight quickly and safely, then you’re on the right path.
Quick weight loss is an ideal goal in my opinion – there’s no point trying to lose weight slowly when you can just lose it fast.
And of course, your weight loss plans should be safe. There’s no reason to try unhealthy supplements and crazy pills and potions which don’t work and just lead to nasty side effects. After all one of the major reasons to lose weight is to be healthy and there’s no point losing weight if you’ll get a nasty disease as a result.
So how exactly do you go about losing weight in a safe and effective manner?
The truth is – there’s no glamorous answer. There’s no pills or magic potions.
The only real way to lose weight quickly is to consume less calories than you burn during the day. Doing this boils down to eating a calorie-controlled healthy diet, and doing some kind of exercise.
A Healthy Weight Loss Diet
A healthy diet is more than just these veggies!
A diet conducive to losing weight is low in calories. While there are many extreme low-calorie diets that can be the fastest way to weight loss, these are not all healthy. Nor is it possible to stay on such a diet for too long.
Instead, a healthy weight loss diet should be low-calorie, but not too low calorie.
How low you should go really depends on your existing weight. It’s possible to easily go 300 – 500 calories lower than your required calories according to your weight. You can find out how many calories you should consume to maintain your existing weight level using the formula described here (you may need to scroll down a bit towards the end of the article).
The fewer calories you consume, the quicker you’ll lose weight.
Losing Weight With Intermittent Fasting
One easy way to increase your rate of fat loss is to do some intermittent fasting. Fasting for weight loss has been proved to be healthy by many scientific studies.
Intermittent fasting for weight loss involves fasting for 18 – 22 hours. According to the Eat Stop Eat diet, which I follow, you fast from after dinner on Day 1 to just before dinner on Day 2. So one day you skip breakfast and lunch. During the fast you can consume 0-calorie drinks such as water, sugarless tea and coffee, herbal tea, green tea, and diet colas (although not recommended for health reasons).
Weight loss with intermittent fasting revolves around the fact that by doing these fasts once or twice a week, you create a weekly caloric deficit. Of course, you will need to maintain a healthy diet the rest of the days – there’s no point doing intermittent fasting if you’ll just be overeating after a fast, since you’ll be consuming more calories and won’t create a fat-burning deficit. You won’t lose weight by doing fasts if you don’t have the sufficient nutrition to maintain a healthy body or if you eat badly on the days you’re not fasting.
Losing Weight By Overeating
Indulging yourself and gorging on your favorite foods is actually essential to losing weight quickly!
If you start to follow either an intermittent fasting diet or a low calorie diet, it’s important to have one cheat day a week – a day when you eat anything you like.
A “cheat day” raises leptin levels and shows your body that you’re getting too much food, so you’ll keep burning off the fat.
Yes, overeating at times can be very important when you’re trying to lose weight. Infact, there’s an entire diet based around overeating one day, and then cycling high GI vs low GI foods in order to burn fat at a faster rate.
The Cheat Your Way Thin diet is a good one to follow if you’re serious about losing weight at a rapid pace while maintaining a healthy lifestyle.
It’s been proven to work for many people and is one of the few weight loss programs that I recommend on this site. I personally do not follow it to the letter, since I prefer the flexibility of combining Eat Stop Eat and the Anything Goes Diet, with a cheat day as recommended in Cheat Your Way Thin. Cheat days remain a very important part of my weight loss diet.
In addition to helping you burn more fat, cheat days also help you stay sane when you’re dieting to lose weight! When you go from a very unhealthy diet to one that’s rather strict, you can start craving unhealthy and fattening foods. Cheat days are a great way to go ahead and consume all those fatty, unhealthy foods – while losing weight at the same time!
Foods To Eat To Lose Weight Safely
When you’re trying to lose weight, you will of course be varying your diet drastically. In order to maintain the nutrients that you’re getting, it’s important to take a high quality multivitamin each day. You should also take a krill or fish oil tablet each day, especially if you are also exercising.
The Anything Goes Diet helps new dieters to create a customized diet plan for themselves that is yummy but still helps them lose weight.
However, if you don’t get the Anything Goes Diet, here are some guidelines to help you create a healthy weight loss diet for yourself. First of all, if you’re looking to implement a drastic Extreme Low Calorie diet (800 – 1000 calories per day) for a week or two to speed up weight loss, I recommend you take a look at my article on the fastest way to lose weight - it contains an outline of such an extreme diet. If you’re consuming such a low amount of calories, then you will want to have some protein (in the form of skinless chicken breast or protein powders) and fill up mainly with veggies, fruit and liquid foods such as broth or low calorie vegetable or chicken soups.
Once you’re off the extreme diet, you will want to have a more normal weight loss diet that’s also healthy. It’s a good idea to calculate how many calories you target eating each day and then base your diet around that.
In general, for any weight loss diet, here are the foods that I focus on:
Protein
We humans need much less protein than you’d normally expect. Make sure you get your diet protein from lean sources such as lean cuts of beef, skinless chicken breast, or even fish (although you may wish to skip the fish if you’re doing an extreme low calorie diet).
Beans and legumes are also good sources of protein as is dairy and certain veggies like broccoli and spinach.
Carbohydrates
I don’t really believe that “all carbs are bad” but I do try to cut down on my carbohydrate consumption, simply because refined carbs are unhealthy, and carbohydrates are very high in calories. Most days when I eat normally, I tend to have a piece of wholemeal bread (make sure it’s made from wholemeal flour and not “enriched” flour) and spoonful of pasta or rice. If you can, stick with wild or brown rice, and wholemeal pasta. Basmati rice can also be a good choice since it’s a low-GI food.
Fruits and Vegetables
I tend to fill up on fruits and veggies. As I mentioned in my post about healthy snacks for weight loss, fruits are also my favorite kind of dessert and snack. Fruits and veggies are an integral part of a weight loss diet because not only are they healthy, but they’re also packed with fibre, which helps you feel more full.
Snacks
You may be interested in reading my article on healthy snacks. I’ve always been a snacker, and the way I consume fewer calories while still having fun is by having my favorite healthy snacks on hand.
Liquids
I try to never consume liquid calories, unless it’s my cheat day. My favorite drink is coffee, and I take it black. I’ve also started drinking a fair bit of green tea, replacing my former habit of lemon tea and herbal tea. Likewise with alcohol - I don’t drink it unless it’s my cheat day.
Food/Treat Substitutions
One easy way for me to stay on my diet has been to make relevant substitutions.
For instance, I used to have a packet or two of chips every afternoon – these days when my salt craving hits, I have a few peanuts instead. Similarly, I’ve stopped having calorie-heavy cakes and biscuits, and instead have a small square of dark chocolate (almost) each day in order to get my chocolate fix. I have dried fruits, fruits and yoghurt as desserts.
Also, I love anything cheesy – so these days I just have a bit of cheese. Minus the carbs and oil, a little bit of cheese isn’t that unhealthy or fattening, and it’s still yummy 
Exercises For Quick and Healthy Weight Loss
Exercise is an essential part of losing weight.
A friend of mine who’s a doctor told me that diet will shrink the fat cells, but exercise will burn them off completely.
This is why people who go on and off diets but don’t exercise enough put back their weight so quickly. And it’s also why the combination of diet + exercise is so perfect for quick, sustainable fat loss.
If you can’t do strenuous exercise for health reasons, please at least do some moderate exercises such as walking or swimming. If you don’t do any exercise, you’re just about guaranteed to put back all the weight you lost by dieting. So why make life more difficult for yourself? Please do yourself a favor and get moving!
This is the time to start humming, “I like to move it move it, I like to move it move it, I like to – ” (from the movie Madagascar )
The Best Exercises For Weight Loss
In my post on the best weight loss exercise, I mentioned that the best exercise for you is the one you like doing.
If you like the exercise, you’re more likely to actually do it, and to stick with it. For instance if you hate running, you’re unlikely to actually do much running even if you want to – but if you like walking you’ll wind up doing some walking.
A little bit of inefficient exercise is better than none at all.
The Exercise That Burns The Most Calories
People are so focused on finding the “best” exercise that sometimes they will pick one high-calorie-burning workout but then not go through with it.
If you must know, spinning is supposed to burn the most calories per hour.
Running also burns a lot of calories per hour, but there is a lot of effort involved in running included maintaining proper form, getting fitted for the right running shoes, and doing sufficient warm-ups and cool-downs. And you actually don’t burn that many calories net, since you need to consume about 300 calories in the form of proper post-running nutrition.
Strength Training
Strength training is an essential part of a weight loss workout. Again, some people have medical conditions which prevent them from doing strength training, but please check with your doctor regarding whether you can do any kind of mild strength training at all.
If you’re able to do strength training, there is absolutely no reason not to!
Strength training will help you get in shape faster and is one of the most efficient workouts. Turbulence Training, which was the first workout that got me results, revolves quite heavily around strength training. I’ve found that although strength training will not burn many calories per hour while you’re doing it (compared to cardio or HIIT) it will help you be stronger, will make you look more “shapely” and will increase the amount of calories you burn in your rested state i.e. it will effectively increase your metabolism.
One important thing to keep in mind with strength training is that you definitely need to build your way up! Don’t just start right off the bat with 50 pound weights. And don’t worry if you find the exercises difficult at first, over time you’ll get stronger and will have an easier time with them.
High Intensity Interval Training
High intensity interval training aka HIIT is one of the most efficient ways to burn calories. Ideally you’d perform this after your strength training workout. HIIT is all about alternating “all out” workouts with moderate workouts such as 30 seconds of sprints alternated with 15 seconds of jogging. How long the different durations are will depend on your fitness level and the workout you’re following. If you’re very unfit you may only be able to do a few “all out” sessions.
I love HIIT because it burns calories in double the time it would normally take. It has a few other benefits as well, such as zapping away those fat cells.
Cardio
Cardio is the one exercise that Hollywood trainers keep going back to. After all, there’s a limit to how much dieting, strength training and HIIT you can do. Steady-state cardio is useful for getting in shape simply because you can do it for a while and can keep doing it. If you’re in a rush to burn off the fat, then consider incorporating some steady-state cardio sessions for extra fat-burning. However, remember that cardio alone will not do the job especially if you’re not following a proper diet.
In Short…
Was that too long? Let me summarize everything I’ve said so far, in case you just scrolled down to the end of the page
The best weight loss plan that will allow you to lose the fat in a safe and quick manner is:
- Go on a healthy diet. You might want to do an extreme low calorie diet for a week or two to get rapid results, but that diet isn’t sustainable. Instead, focus on eating healthy, but count your calories so that you consume a bit less than your requirements.
- Do some intermittent fasting to get quick fat loss results. Scientific studies prove that intermittent fasting is healthy, and it definitely works – I use the Eat Stop Eat intermittent fasting method myself, with pretty great results.
- Get moving! At the very least, do some moderate exercise to burn off the fat cells. Diet will make the fat cells shrink but only exercise will burn off the cells completely. If you don’t exercise, you put yourself at a very high risk of regaining all that weight you just lost by dieting – so why make things difficult for yourself? Exercise may seem hard at first, but soon you’ll love the endorphin rush that exercise creates
- Strength training and HIIT are the best workouts to do if you’re serious about losing weight.
- Try to do exercise that you love doing – whether it’s dancing, walking or rock climbing.
- Mix in some steady-state cardio if you’re interested in burning off the fat faster.
Ok, I hope that helps! Let me know if you’ve got any comments or questions, I love hearing from my readers
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