Are you 30 or more pounds overweight? If so, you may be looking for ways to lose that weight quickly! Many diet plans claim that you can lose 30 pounds in a month, or less! Is that even healthy? What is the optimal rate of weight loss? Be careful with fast weight loss gimmicks. Below is a summary of how you can actually lose 30 pounds the healthy way and keep it off.
Optimal Rate of Weight Loss
The best rate of fat loss is 2-3 pounds per week. At this rate, you could lose 30 pounds in about 10-15 weeks (about 2 and a half to 3 months). In order to lose 2-3 pounds per week of fat, you probably will need to put in a lot of effort to change your lifestyle.
Each pound is equal to about 3000 calories. If your basic metabolic rate is 1800 calories, and you ate 1200 calories per day and burned 550 calories per day through exercise, you would lose 30 pounds of pure fat in about 11 weeks. This is probably the lowest you can go with your calorie intake, and burning 550 calories per day is definitely going to break a sweat. This will be quite an accomplishment, though, to burn 30 pounds of pure fat. Many weight loss diets prescribe a very low calorie diet of 500 or 600 calories daily – but it is impossible to meet your vitamin and mineral needs on this diet, and it is not sustainable. Likely you will gain much of it back when you go back to your regular diet. In order to lose 30 pounds quickly and actually keep it off, you need to learn how to change your eating habits for life. You can’t change your habits permanently if you are eating less than 1200 calories daily.
Fluid Weight – Losing 30 Pounds In A Month
Losing 30 pounds of fat in a month is not realistic – you would have to burn 3000 calories per day! If what you really want is to look and feel great, and you would like to do it more quickly, you can consider losing some extra fluid weight if you are carrying it around. Do your legs ever swell up during the summer? Do you feel bloated sometimes? That weight is often not just fat, a lot of times it can be fluid too. If you had 15 pounds of extra fluid in your body you could easily lose that in a month in addition to some fat loss.
Fluid weight can come off if you follow a very low sodium diet. Try to stay below 1500 mg of sodium per day. Drink a lot of water. Don’t eat any processed foods with sodium added. Eat natural, fresh, whole foods that are straight from their natural source. Choose fresh fruits, vegetables, meats and whole grains. Frozen vegetables and fruits will work too, as long as there is no added sugar, sodium, sauces, or preservatives. Doing this will pull the fluid out of your body. If you do this in addition to a weight loss regimen with a calorie deficit created through diet and exercise, you can lose those 30 pounds in just one month, provided that a fair amount of it is fluid. Because it’s not all fat, though, so as soon as you start eating salty foods again, you will gain that fluid right back. It feels great to get rid of the excess fluid, though, so it might benefit you to stay on at least a 2000 mg or lower sodium diet permanently, especially if you deal with swelling frequently.
Losing 30 Pounds In 2 Months
Losing 30 pounds of pure fat can be done in 2 months, but it will not be easy. This would be a good range of time for a person who does not have a lot of excess fluid weight. In order to lose 30 pounds in 2 months, you would have to create a daily calorie deficit of 1500 calories. Most of this would likely need to be exercise, thus you would likely need a lot of excess time in your days to exercise.
Do not try to lose 30 pounds in 2 months if you don’t have at least 2 hours to devote to exercise daily, as it would be an unrealistic goal. Using the example above, if your basal metabolic rate was 1800 calories, you could go on a 1200 calorie diet to create a 600 calorie deficit. You would then need to burn about 900 calories by exercising. This would be about 2 hours of a moderate paced run.
Losing 30 Pounds In 3 Months
In order to lose 30 pounds and fit your weight loss into your current lifestyle, 3 months is likely the most realistic goal. Thirty pounds of weight loss in 90 days is about a 1000 calorie deficit daily. This is a very achievable goal with just about 1 hour of exercise daily.
Again, if your basal metabolic rate is 1800 calories, and you eat 1200 calories,
this is about a 600 calorie deficit to start. Then if you burn 400 calories in exercise, you could easily meet your goal. 400 calories could be burned either through a half hour long high intensity interval training such as kick boxing or body pump, or through a moderate intensity activity hour long activity like aerobics.
Conclusion
However long it takes you to lose the 30 pounds that you are aiming for, the most important thing is consistency. Even if you only lose 1 pound a week, you will take the weight off eventually! In the famous fable about the tortoise and the hare, the tortoise always wins – slow and steady.
Take success in the fact that each time you get on the scale, the number is dropping! Remember again that you did not gain thirty pounds in one, two, or even three months. It usually takes a little longer to get that weight back off. Once you have it off, consider changing your lifestyle permanently and keeping yourself fit and healthy so you can keep your weight stable and remain healthy.
