Losing weight seems an uphill task to many, especially when you need to lose weight yesterday.
And especially when you need to look good for an upcoming occasion or event.
For achieving quick weight loss like ten pounds in a week, people often resort to crash dieting or spend hours sweating out in the gym.
In fact, there are countless fad diets that enable you to shed pounds in a couple of days, but they have detrimental effects on your body and health, leaving you sick, hungry and nutrition deprived.
Of course, there are other painless ways to achieve this goal without dieting.
All you need to do is maintain a healthy lifestyle comprising of nutrition, fitness, proper sleep and hydration.
The best part is that these strategies not only enable you to lose ten pounds in a week’s time, but also help you to maintain a healthy weight in the long run. Here are 12 strategies to get you going.
1. Burn 5000 Calories More Than You Take In:
In order to lose 10 pounds in a week, you need to burn 5000 more calories than you take in per day.
Agreed, that’s too much for an average person, but you have to push yourself to achieve this goal.
Also, it should be kept in mind that an average person burns about 2000 calories while doing normal routine activities.
This means that if you consume exactly 2000 calories through food every day, you will neither gain nor lose weight.
To burn extra calories, you can make simple changes in your lifestyle like walking instead of driving, taking stairs instead of the lift and simply breathing.
2. Do Not Skip Breakfast:
Breakfast is, undoubtedly, one of the most important meals of the day and skipping it in an urge to cut calories is not at all a great option.
In fact, several studies have shown that people who had breakfast regularly had comparatively lower BMIs than breakfast skippers.
So, kick start your day a healthy and nutritious way by having a bowl of oatmeal or whole grain cereal topped with fruit or low fat dairy. Y
ou can also have scrambled eggs to fulfil your protein requirements, but avoid heavy and oily foods for breakfast.
3. Incorporate Lean Proteins In Your Diet:
Incorporating lean proteins in your meals and snacks will keep you from overeating by keeping you full for longer.
You can try 98% lean beef, skinless chicken breast, eggs and certain fish like salmon.
For vegetarians, soy products like edamame or tofu, low fat yogurt, peanut butter, nuts and beans are good sources of lean proteins.
Besides, it is advisable to have frequent meals at an interval of 3 to 4 hours to maintain your blood sugar levels and avoid overindulgence.
4. Cut the Consumption of Simple Carbohydrates:
Simple carbs, also known as refined carbohydrates, get absorbed by our body quickly but provide zero nutrition.
So it is advisable to stay away from simple carbs like cookies, candies, molasses, honey, cakes and other baked sweets, and packaged cereals.
5. Avoid Fast Food:
Fast foods are synonymous of unhealthy foods. Besides being loaded with trans-fat, fast foods like fries, burgers and shakes contain a whopping amount of sugar and salt which can cause you to pile on the pounds.
They are also nil in terms of nutrition. Hence, if you want to shed ten pounds effectively, it is advisable to avoid fast foods completely.
6. Eat Smaller Portions:
It will be, indeed, pleasing to know that reducing your portion size by 10% to 20% can also lead to weight loss.
You can trim your portion size by using smaller bowls and plates or measuring cups to measure your portion sizes.
Eating smaller frequent meals will not only keep you full, but also boost your metabolism, thus leading to weight loss.
7. Avoid Late Night Snacking:
We can’t deny the fact that most of us indulge in mindless late night snacking while watching television or late night working.
We don’t realize that we are loading our bodies with unnecessary calories by doing so. It is advisable to have your dinner before 9 at night.
If you want to have dessert, you can have a bowl of light ice cream or frozen yogurt. After that, just brush your teeth so that you are less likely to eat or drink anything else.
8. Drink Plenty of Water:
Hydration is regarded as synonymous with water and drinking plenty of water is, undoubtedly, one of the best ways to keep oneself hydrated.
Ensure to drink at least 8 glasses of water in a day.
Besides being devoid of calories, water keeps you full such that you are less likely to overeat.
To avoid hunger pangs in between meals, you can have a big glass of water.
Apart from water, there are other ways of hydration.
Unsweetened green tea, for instance, is a good option as it is rich in antioxidants and has zero calories.
9. Avoid Liquid Calories:
As stated earlier, to achieve the desirable weight loss, it is important to control the intake of calories and liquid calories are no exception.
The processed fruit juices, energy drinks and aerated drinks might appear tempting, but they load your body with about a third of your entire calories for the day.
Instead, you can quench your thirst with water, citrus juices or 100% percent fruit juices.
Vegetable juices are also a nutritious option to satisfy your hunger in between meals.
Alcohol calories should be particularly avoided as they add up quickly.
So it is advisable to restrict the consumption of wine or cocktails to weekends in order to save calories.
10.Compound Exercises:
Compound exercises involve working out multiple joints and are considered the best bodyweight exercises.
For instance, the exercises performed below navel work out your quadriceps, hamstrings and gluteus, the three largest muscle groups in your body.
They create minor after-burn tears in the muscle fibres, causing a large burn in calories post workout as a lot of energy is required to repair those tears.
You can try compound exercises like bench press, squats, clean and press etc.
11. Weight Training:
Weight training is another way to lose weight effectively. In fact, it is a misconception that weight training is meant for building bigger muscles and not losing weight.
Weight training if done properly can speed up your fat burning process during workouts and even long after the workout is over.
Training with weight is anaerobic in nature that burns carbohydrates. Unlike aerobic training, it helps build lean body mass.
But it accelerates your metabolism, causing you to burn more fat. To effectively lose 10 pounds in a week, it is advisable to indulge in weight training routine involving compound exercises at a higher intensity level.
12. Proper Sleep:
Research has proved that sleep deprivation can cause you to gain weight.
This is simply due to the fact that the longer you are awake, the more you are likely to eat.
In fact, it is a common scenario that people who are in late night working often have several cups of coffee to avoid feeling sleepy.
The result is clear, they consume extra calories. The duration and quality of your sleep influence the production of certain hormones which are directly linked with your appetite.