Dropping the Pounds Quickly for an Event
It's a situation you've all been in before: a wedding in the family is next month, but you've put on too much weight and can't find anything to wear. Therefore, you need to shed at least 10 pounds rapidly.
The bulk of your weight loss will consist of muscle and water if you go on a crash diet, so it's best to take it nice and steady if you want to keep your muscle mass while shedding fat.
However, time is of the essence here, so you will have to diet very rigorously to achieve your desired weight loss. Let's start there; everyone is aware that diets are ineffective because they trigger the body's starvation mode, a holdover from the days of old when people had to find ways to stay alive during famine.
When you restrict your caloric intake too much, your metabolic rate drops and your body stops burning fat. Simultaneously, your body sends stronger hunger signals, and you develop an intense desire for high-energy meals that are heavy in fats and sugars, even if you know that they are bad for you.
According to a review of the scientific literature, repeated dieting is associated with a decrease in metabolic rate, making it more challenging to lose weight and easier to gain it back if regular eating habits are resumed. You not only put on weight again after losing weight, but you may acquire much more fat than you had before.
Despite this knowledge, you've decided to go through with the procedure anyhow since the occasion calls for it. Unfortunately, your metabolism will need to be kicked into high gear after being slowed down by dieting. You need to execute a "strength training" program to kickstart your metabolism in this way. Strength training helps you burn fat by raising your metabolism and the amount of lean muscle in your body.
Twenty or thirty minutes a week is all I need to dedicate to my strength training method. Gone are the days of the ineffective five-day-a-week regimen consisting of six to twelve sets per body area. Even if you're already in excellent physical condition, a single short, hard strength-training exercise each week might boost your metabolism in ways you never imagined.
While it's true that you burn calories while exercising, the increased metabolism you experience, particularly after strength training, keeps on burning calories for hours after you've stopped moving.
The exercise itself and the rest period that follows it are the two fundamental pillars of this method. To get more functional lean muscle and less body fat, you need to lift weights in short, high-intensity sessions that are spaced out with the time you need to recover and get stronger.
An ongoing nutrition plan is the most effective method for reducing excess body fat while preserving lean muscle mass. You should prioritize high-quality nutrition and increased physical activity as your first priorities. Foods that are high in volume but low in calories, fat, and sugar that have not been refined are good.
Daily protein intake should be spread out across many small meals in order to keep muscle mass and energy levels up. In addition, you should be taking a daily vitamin and mineral supplement of the highest quality that covers a wide range of nutrients.
Just as previously, it's best to acquire your calories from nutritious, high-quality food, but if you can't, you can always use a blender to whip up a concoction out of skim milk and whatever flavorings you choose, so long as you remember to include them in your daily calorie allotment.
Now include these blended concoctions and solid meals into your regular diet. Consume it in the form of many smaller meals rather than the three large ones you're probably used to. Buying a calorie counter and keeping track of your daily caloric intake for a week is the best approach to monitor weight loss progress.
Next, using a seven-day eating plan and calorie counter, determine your daily calorie average; from this amount, subtract 1,000 to get your daily calorie goal.
Keeping in mind that there are 3500 calories in one pound of fat, it just takes cutting your caloric intake by 1000 a day, or 7000 per week, to lose two pounds. Limiting fat consumption is another method for reducing caloric intake.
Increasing your incidental activity will help you burn at least an extra pound of fat every week, which is crucial if you want to lose that much weight in such a short length of time. Fast walking, whether on a treadmill inside or outdoors, is the best workout for fat reduction.
Maintain a steady walking pace until the clock chimes. If you find yourself gasping for air during aerobic exercises, you are likely exerting yourself beyond what your body can handle and using up precious carbohydrate reserves rather than your body's fat stores for fuel. We recommend that you spend an hour every day, seven days a week, walking as quickly as possible.
As a seasoned fitness instructor, I would not advise my customers to follow such a regimen. The rapid weight loss and very low calorie intake make this plan unsustainable.
I tell my clients that if they cut their caloric intake by 500 calories a day (and no more), they would be able to lose one to two pounds of body fat per week without going hungry, feeling deprived, or having to make major changes to their routine.
Keep in mind that this is a long-term goal; if you succeed, you will have shed between 30 and 50 pounds of fat in that time frame. In a hurry, you'll end up losing valuable muscle tissue and water weight.