Everyone’s interested in losing weight fast. After all, few people say, “I want to lose weight slowly” – it’s only natural to want to achieve results asap.
And this makes a lot of sense. After all, not seeing results is demotivating.
Personally, I was able to lose weight fast by combining two diet programs: the Anything Goes Diet and the Eat Stop Eat Diet. By combining the flexible, healthy eating approach outlined in the Anything Goes program, with the intermittent fasting approach described in Eat Stop Eat, I was able to create a big weekly calorie deficit which led to my weight loss success (you can read more about this in the “My Story” page).
The Best Way To Get Started With Losing Weight Fast
The best way to get started to lose weight fast is to harness your initial enthusiasm to get the difficult things done. After that, you can take things more slowly.
The first thing you want to do if you’re interested in losing weight is to clean out your home.
Purge any snacks and treats.
Trust me, if they’re in your house, they’ll be in your tummy.
Now, you may be wondering about your kids and family. They’ll have to go without treats too – when you’re just starting out on a weight loss and fitness journey, it’s best not to leave temptations lying around in your way.
Cutting out snack foods may be difficult for your family, but it’s best for their health as well. Find some non-food treats that you can give your kids to keep them happy, e.g. 30 minutes of their favorite sitcom, their favorite fruit, etc.
The next thing you want to do while you’re still feeling enthusiastic is to plan out your weight-loss roadmap. I highly recommend reading the Anything Goes Diet - it’s not really a diet plan per se, but rather a way to approach your weight loss goals. This program can help you to understand how skinny people stay skinny naturally, and how you can do the same – read my full review here. It’s a great book to read when you’re starting out, since it will help you start on the right foot, and stick to your goals.
Getting Started With Weight Loss – Juice Diets For Quick Fat Loss
The way I got started with weight loss was by doing a juice diet.
This is one of the more difficult things I’ve done to lose weight, but it was worth it for me at that time. I lost a few pounds in four days. And though I only lasted four days on the diet, I saw that it was indeed possible to lose weight – previously I had started to give up. My juice diet success helped me to be enthusiastic about losing weight again. (At the time when I started, I hadn’t heard of the Anything Goes Diet – if I had, life would have been easier for me.)
Many people say that most of the weight you’ll lose will be from water, but that’s not necessarily true. A juice fast will give your body a chance to detox and will help you to really jumpstart your weight loss.
Remember, you don’t have to buy expensive “juice diet packs” or anything, just use fresh fruits and veggies, and remember to have multivitamins and krill/fish oil tablets during your diet in order to keep up your nutrient intake.
The Next Step In Losing Weight Fast: A Good Diet For Weight Loss
You don’t have to get started with weight loss by doing a juice diet, but my juice fast helped me to be confident I could actually lose weight. When you’ve been trying and failing for a long time, it’s all too easy to lose hope.
Once you’ve finished your juice diet, it’s time to switch to a healthy eating lifestyle, and to have the kind of lifestyle that “naturally skinny” people maintain. When you’ve gained weight, it’s easy to forget about what kind of diet you should maintain, and things like how to indulge without overdoing it and gaining weight. Instead of thinking about short term, “fad” diets, find a program that you feel comfortable with and have no trouble sticking to. I’m not a fan of restrictive diets since they’re hard to stay on for too long – there’s only so much a person can do!
A Healthy Eating Diet For Weight Loss
Instead of going for a super-strict, rabbit-food-endorsing diet, I recommend working out a flexible diet for yourself to follow.
As I mention in my “About” page, I gained weight mainly because I picked up some very bad habits. I had to re-learn what it really meant to eat healthy, and I had to learn the tricks to following a diet that didn’t feel difficult to maintain.
This is where the Anything Goes Diet helped me out: it really struck a chord with me. It taught me that I don’t have to deprive myself to lose weight. I also learnt how to eat the foods I love and still lose weight. You can read about how I incorporate it with intermittent fasting to lose weight quickly here.
How Many Calories Should I Eat Each Day To Lose Weight?
When planning your healthy weight loss diet, do a quick calculation of how many calories you need to consume each day for a caloric deficity. This is covered in the Anything Goes Diet, but I want to give a quick explanation here:
Basically, you need to eat fewer calories than your body requires for daily use – eating fewer calories will force your body to burn the fat for energy, which means you’ll slim down.
Here’s a quick overview of how many calories you need to eat each day using the Harris Benedict Formula:
First, you need to determine your base metabolic rate (BMR). To calculate this, use the following formula:
Women:
655 + (4.3 x weight in pounds) + (4.7 x height in inches) – (4.7 x age in years)
Men:
66 + (6.3 x weight in pounds) + (12.9 x height in inches) – (6.8 x age in years)
Please note that this formula applies only to adults.
Daily Caloric Needs Formula:
To determine your total daily calorie needs, multiply your BMR by the appropriate activity factor, as follows:
- If you are sedentary (little or no exercise) : Calorie-Calculation = BMR x 1.2
- If you are lightly active (light exercise/sports 1-3 days/week) : Calorie-Calculation = BMR x 1.375
- If you are moderatetely active (moderate exercise/sports 3-5 days/week) : Calorie-Calculation = BMR x 1.55
- If you are very active (hard exercise/sports 6-7 days a week) : Calorie-Calculation = BMR x 1.725
- If you are extra active (very hard exercise/sports & physical job or 2x training) : Calorie-Calculation = BMR x 1.9
Total Calorie Needs Example
If you are sedentary, multiply your BMR (1745) by 1.2 = 2094. This is the total number of calories you need in order to maintain your current weight.
As you lose weight, you’ll need to recalculate this formula.
In order to lose weight, you’ll need to eat fewer calories than the caloric needs formula dictates. In general, if you want to lose weight fast and don’t like the idea of intermittent fasting for quick weight loss, you can aim for 300 – 500 fewer calories per day. This should lead to a loss of 1 -2 pounds per week (when coupled with my other recommendations). Or, you can apply the methods taught in the Anything Goes Diet to reduce your intake by only 50 calories a day – and you’ll lose weight over time. You can also eat 50 fewer calories (as discussed in AGD) and combine it with the intermittent fasting approach outlined in Eat Stop Eat to lose weight fast - this is the combo I used and I’d recommend it to anyone who wants to lose weight fast. You can read my review of Eat Stop Eat here.
An Easy Weight Loss Diet
Now that you’ve determined how many calories you need to eat to lose weight, you need to plan out your diet. If you’ve got a copy of the Anything Goes Diet, you should’ve read it by now, and you should apply what you’ve learnt from there. At the very least, make a list of healthy foods that you like to eat, and then plan to eat them.
For instance, my typical diet is like this:
Breakfast: rolled oats with raisins and cinnamon, sometimes a pinch of protein powder. Or, wholegrain bread with avocado or light olive oil spread. And coffee, of course (black, no sugar)
Lunch: Options include
- an apple
- vegetable soup
- cheese
- slice of wholegrain bread
- fish
Snack: Options include:
- rolled oats
- handful of peanuts
- grilled veggies
Dinner: Generally some kind of carb dish like Basmati rice, couscous or wild rice with vegetable curry and/or some kind of small serving of meat/fish. Or, some pasta or casserole – something with some carbs, some protein and some veggies.
I allow myself to have multiple cups of coffee, decaf, herbal tea and green tea during the day, as long as I don’t have any milk or sugar. In the summer, I’ll have soda water with a pinch of lemon juice. I make sure to avoid liquid calories like juice, soda, alcohol, etc.
Generally, I have a few pieces of dried apricot during the day (no more than three). Most days I’ll have a small square of dark chocolate as a treat – I never deprive myself!
This diet is very easy for me to maintain since I mix it up with the Eat Stop Eat diet. You can read my full review of the Eat Stop Eat diet here. Basically, I do one or two “stop” days a week, and give myself some extra treats during the weekend. I used to have a massive “cheat day”, but nowadays I spread my treats over a few days – eg, fries and nuggets on Friday night, a slice of cheesecake on Saturday, and a nice “big breakfast” (hash brown, eggs, spinach, mushrooms) on Sunday. However, you have to plan out your treats to make sure you don’t go crazy with them!
Losing Weight Fast With Exercise
The first step to losing weight quickly is fixing your diet. The right diet alone will create a large enough caloric deficit to lose weight fast.
However, the next step is to exercise. Ideally, you’d do both things simultaneously, but that’s not always possible, and if you must do only one thing, I recommend following a good diet.
However, if you’re ready to amp up things and you want to progress faster, I recommend following a good exercise program.
Read more about the best exercises for losing weight here.
Remember, that when you’re exercising you need to spend enough time warming up and stretching. Also remember to have a krill oil tablet to help muscle recovery and to get a massage if you feel too sore from your workout.
Losing Weight Fast: Keep That Weight Off!
One last thing to remember if you’re on a weight loss journey, is that you want to keep that weight off! There’s no point doing all these things if you just put the weight back on.
So learn to find healthy foods that you love, how to limit portion sizes of treats so that you still get to eat what you love without binging, and how to use a fun and easy diet that you enjoy.
Good luck!
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Thanks for posting this Alisha. What about healthy snacks? Surely they exist. I can’t go through the day just eating meals, I like eating in between, especially snacks.
Hey Rochelle, I struggle with snacks a bit, I think most people who’ve ever put on weight do the same. We overeat because we’re emotional, not because we’re hungry, and a lot of snacking is out of boredom. Update: I wrote a new post on healthy weight loss snacks, please check it out for more details
I keep my boredom snacking in check by having hot drinks like coffee, decaf, herbal teas, green tea and lemon tea. In the summer I sometimes have sparkling water with a few drops of lemon juice.
When I’m hungry and want snacks, I either have:
- a piece of dried fruit. This satisfies sweet cravings, and most regular (ie with no sugar added) dried fruit has a few calories only and is packed with fibre.
- cheese. I know. I love cheese. My trick is to just have a little bit.
- Peanuts. Again, I used to have to count them out, now I know how much I should eat. Satisfies my salty craving and replaces the chips I used to eat. Plus, they’re cheap as peanuts
- If I’ve skipped breakfast/lunch and want a snack, sometimes I have vegetable soup.
I should really do a post on all the food replacements I’ve done so that I have healthier food that I like.
Some other yummy snack suggestions are:
Trick is to stop after 1 square!
- veggie sticks, like carrots and cucumber
- pickles (there was a time when I had pickle cravings!)
- other nuts
- healthy salads, make sure there are no added unhealthy dressings though!
- fruits.
- small square of dark chocolate – I have this with my coffee sometimes
- wholemeal crackers, again check the calories.
Hmm, I’m running out of ideas, since most days I stick to a small range of foods. I’d love to hear other readers’ suggestions
Some very sound information on ways to lose weight fast. I tried the fruit juice diet for a couple of days. I did feel a little bit hungry at times, but I think it gave my body a chance to rest and detox. I followed up with a healthy mixed diet and boosted the weight loss with some regular exercise. Even just going for a 20 minute brisk walk can make a difference.
Begin your day with a glass of water for loss weight fast . As soon as you awaken, gulp down a glass of cool water. Its exquisite thanks to begin you day and you merely want a lesser amount of your breakfast drink at the moment.
The benefits of starting your day with water are debated, but I’ll admit that this is what I do. I never feel like going straight for breakfast as soon as I’m up, so I keep sipping water. Most days I’ll have downed two glasses of the h2o before I have breakfast – however I’m not really sure if it helps me lose weight in any way. Thanks for your comment though
The short answer is Yes, it is possible to lose weight fast.