Losing a whopping 12 pounds in a week might sound like a bogus claim from a shady weight loss program that sound too good to be true. We all know that when things sound too good to be true, they mostly aren’t. Right?
Well, I hate to break this to you but in this case, losing up to 12 pounds isn’t that difficult if you know what to do and have an effective plan to boot with. Although, some of these lost pounds will come from excess water weight. But a pound is a pound, right? At least you get to look good and have a slimmer appearance.
HOW TO LOSE UP TO 12 POUNDS IN A WEEK
When it comes to losing weight, they are many ways to go about it. Here are 7 steps we recommend you follow to lose as much as 12 pounds in your first week of losing weight.
- Reduce Your Sugar And Carb Intake
When it comes to losing weight, one of the most important parts is to reduce your sugar and starches consumption. By cutting back on carbs and sugar, which is empty calorie, by the way, your body turns to the fat in your body to get the needed energy to perform its function.
When you eat less carbs, you have less glucose for your body to burn as fuel. As a result, your body turns to fat for the needed fuel.
Moreover, reducing your carb intake helps lower your insulin levels. This causes your kidneys to expel excess sodium and water out of your body, which helps reduce bloating and excess water weight that makes you look fatter.
When you eat this way, your chances of losing up to 12 pounds (or sometimes more) is guaranteed as you get rid of both body fat and excess water weight.
It’s no brainer why most diets program you see today are advocating a low-carb diet for weight loss and incorporating it into their systems.
- Eat A Balanced Diet Rich In Protein, Healthy Fat and Vegetables
For every meal you have, ensuring they are rich in protein, fat and lots of veggie can help you in a lot of ways as far as losing your weight is concerned.
When your meal is filled with non-starchy vegetables, fresh fruits, and lean proteins, your carb intake is automatically lowered as you get filled up quickly and satiated for a longer period. You can easily achieve the weight loss recommended range of 20 – 50 grams per day for carbs when you fill your meal with varieties of other nutritious foods.
Protein Sources could be from:
- Meat: chicken, lamb, beef, pork
- Fish and Seafood: Tuna, shrimp, trout, salmon
- Eggs: Whole eggs
As you know, protein is an essential nutrient when it comes to losing weight, and its role should not be underestimated.
Protein has been shown to boost the body metabolism by 80 – 100 calories per day. According to research, diets rich in protein helps reduce cravings and obsessive thoughts about food, reduces late-night snacking desire by half, and make you eat fewer calories.
Vegetable low in carbs includes – broccoli, tomatoes, carrots, Swiss chard, lettuce, cucumber, Kale, cabbage, cauliflower, and so on.
The good thing about adding veggies to your meal is that they’re low in calories but powerhouses of nutrients that are beneficial to your health and weight loss goals. By filling your meal with veggies, your carb intake drastically reduce, which helps to facilitate weight loss.
- Try HIIT and Lift Weights
Dieting and exercising go hand in hand when it comes to losing weight. Exercise is one of the amazing ways to shed some pounds, tone your body and improve your appearance.
Performing aerobic exercises with resistance training, such as weight lifting can help you lose weight, develop and maintain your muscle mass and strength.
Lowering your body’s carb stores and water weight leads to a reduction in weight, which is what you get when you perform a full-body resistance training workout.
By lifting weights, you also improve and protect your metabolism and hormone levels that’s prone to declining when dieting.
If you don’t have the time to carry out regular exercises that take much of your time, going the HIIT route might be your best option. High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) is also a very good way of performing physical activity.
According to research, performing 5 – 10 minutes of HIIT can help you attain the same benefits (or more) and 5x the weight loss expected from performing regular exercises.
If you found out that lifting weights is not an option for you, you can try HIIT with some cardio workouts like swimming, jogging, walking, and cycling, etc.
- Avoid Processed Foods Like The Plague They are
A tall order, huh? Not really. If you seriously want to lose 12 pounds of fat, lose your love handle, be able to fit in into your dinner gowns and bikinis, then processed foods and junks is a no-no.
There’s a saying that you can’t have your cake and eat it too, well, that sayings apply to this situation too.
Processed foods and junks at best spikes your insulin levels, make your body store more fat, increase your cravings for more foods as you get hungry quickly even after consuming a lot of some minutes ago.
- Reduce Your Calorie Intake
This is an integral aspect of weight loss that determines your success as a weight loser. The lesser the calories you consume, the more you lose weight, provided you burn more calories.
Simple, healthy tips to reduce your calorie intake include:
- Calories counting: It’s stressful but rewarding in the long run. By counting your calories, you’re conscious of what goes into your stomach, which helps you in making a healthy decision and food choices. There are several calories counting calculator online you can use for this purpose.
- Cut back on your seasonings or sauces: Seasonings are great for keeping things lively in the kitchen and giving your taste buds some lovely treat. Unfortunately, some of these seasonings and sauces are calorie-dense, which are counter-productive to your weight loss goals – lose 12 pounds within a week.
- Improve your diet: fill up your plate with more veggies and lean proteins while you limit your intake of starchy carbs.
- Eat Your Calories, Don’t Drink: if you’re thirsty, opt for drinking a glass of water or any of the zero calorie drinks you can lay your hands on. You want to eat your calories rather drink them as it’s way easier to consume much more calories when you drink your calories.
Moreover, you might have to constantly drink more calories in an attempt to keep off hunger or satisfy your cravings for food as drinks might not make you feel full compared to when you eat.
- Eat your food slowly: When you eat fast, you curb the release of certain hormones that signal to your body that it’s full and should stop eating. When this happens, you’re prone to overeating as you don’t get the “memo” that you should stop eating in time.
- Get a quality, adequate night sleep: Not having enough quality sleep is seriously bad mojo as far as your health is concerned. You risk spiking your cortisol level and promoting fat gain.
- Include dietary fiber in your food: fibers are quite famous for their role in making you feel full. By adding more fibers to your meal, you eat less and are satiated for longer periods.
- Drink a glass of water (or two) before having your meals: According to a study, drinking some water thirty minutes before eating increases your weight loss by 44% over 3 months.
- Avoid (or drink less) fruit juice: Eat your fruits rather than drink them. Most fruit juices are choked-full of sugar, which is counter-productive to your weight loss. Rather than taking fruit juice, enjoy your fruit in natural, solid form.
- Drink coffee: Coffee is rich in caffeine, which studies have shown to help burn more fat and lose excess water by increasing your metabolism.
- Don’t Limit Your Activity To The Gym Alone
Increasing your daily activity is an awesome way of burning extra calories and losing more weight. Keep the calories burning by engaging in more activities. Go for a walk when you’re less busy, take the stairs rather than the elevator, walk to get your lunch rather than order it.
The idea is to keep doing things that keep you busy and makes you active.
- Do Some Healthy, Purposeful, Intermittent Fasting
According to research, intermittent fasting is an effective way of shedding some pounds. When you fast, your calorie intake is lowered. Low calorie intake promotes weight loss.
PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER
Losing your first 12 pounds isn’t that difficult if you judiciously follow the tips outlined here. If you can tweak your diets, increase your physical activity and live a healthy lifestyle, you can be assured of losing some inches from your waistline and fitting into those lovely shirt of yours once again.
P.S: Once you achieve your weight loss goals. It’s advisable you switch to a sustainable plan to help you maintain the weight loss, and even burn more.
Modern Fit provides tailored nutrition and fitness plans that help create healthy habits over time. Their plans are sustainable and the fitness plans help achieve a toned body. Sign up today!
